Food Plant Equipment Installation in Modesto, California

Gallo has been headquartered in Modesto since 1933 and is the largest family-owned winery in the world, with more than 7,000 employees worldwide. Worth a note for anyone writing about them: the company simplified its name from "E. & J. Gallo Winery" to just GALLO in early 2024.

The detail that makes Modesto unusual is Gallo Glass, described as the largest glass container plant in the United States — on the order of 2.5 million bottles a day across five furnaces. A glass plant is heavy continuous-process manufacturing: molten glass, forming machines, annealing lehrs, and furnaces that run for years at a stretch. There is very little else like it in Northern California.

Some plants here genuinely cannot be shut down. A glass furnace is the extreme case: once it is hot, it runs continuously for years, and taking it down is a major planned event called a cold repair, scheduled far in advance and executed at enormous cost. Dairy and continuous food operations are the same idea at a smaller scale — seven-day operation, clean-in-place cycles instead of shutdowns, and windows measured in hours rather than weeks.

Working in that environment changes the method more than the steel. Everything gets prefabricated so on-site time is minimal. We design for bolted and mechanically fastened connections wherever possible, because hot work near a live process is a permit event with real constraints and sometimes is not permitted at all. We plan for work that has to be done in stages across multiple short windows rather than in one continuous push. And we take dimensions while the plant is running, because there is no shutdown to take them during. If your facility has a cold repair or major planned outage on the calendar, that date is the single most important input to the schedule — tell us as early as you have it, and we will work backward through commissioning, fabrication, procurement, and engineering from it.

Thermal movement is a design input near heat. Structure near furnaces, ovens, dryers, and annealing equipment moves, and it moves repeatedly. Platforms, supports, and access steel in those areas need expansion allowance, material selected for the service temperature, connection details that tolerate cyclic movement, and coatings that survive it. A structure detailed for ambient conditions and installed next to a heat source fails at the connections, usually within a couple of years, and usually somewhere inconvenient. We ask what the actual operating and radiant temperatures are at the location rather than assuming ambient, and we would rather over-detail a connection than replace it.

Custom barrel handler → — Barrel handling equipment built to a specific cellar's rack geometry, barrel format, and forklift. Directly relevant to Modesto's wine operations and to any facility moving barrels or totes on non-standard racking.

Dust collection and air handling → — Ducting, hoods, and support steel routed through an operating facility without relocating production. Applicable to Stanislaus County's almond, walnut, and dry ingredient handling.