Houweling’s takes final step out of Ventura County
All of the remaining operations of Houweling’s Camarillo and its proprietor Casey Houwling will leave the Ventura County area before the end of the year as the company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act with the state earlier this month.
California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, requires companies to notify state and local governments of plant closures and mass layoffs.
Houweling’s, an indoor tomato and cucumber grower that has been in the Camarillo area since 1996, will be permanently laying off its remaining 287 employees and closing its growing and harvest operations located in Oxnard, according to a notice filed with the state of California and county of Ventura.
The move is not surprising as Houweling’s first made plans to leave the Ventura County area back in 2021 when it sold its greenhouse at 645 Laguna Rd. to Glass House Brands.
Glass House bought the 160-acre property which has six greenhouses that total 5.5 million square feet for $93 million in cash, plus stock considerations back in September of 2021.
Glass House, a cannabis company that is publicly traded in Canada, began converting the greenhouse for cannabis cultivation once the purchase was complete.
But, over the past few years, Glass House leased a few of the greenhouse spaces back to Houweling’s to continue some cucumber and tomato operations.
Those lease agreements end this year, Glass House President Graham Farrar told the Business Times via text Oct. 2.
As such, Houweling’s will be permanently closing all of its agricultural greenhouse operations at the above location by early November (tomatoes) and cucumbers by mid-December 2024.
The company will be moving its entire operation to Wilcox, Arizona, meaning it will have no presence in California by the end of the year.
Jeanette Lombardo, who has worked closely with Houweling since 2012 as a consultant and chief administration officer for some of his newer properties, told the Business Times he is moving his production out of state because “California has become very difficult for agriculture.”
“A lot of farmers are moving out of state. But this wasn’t anything that wasn’t anticipated or expected,” she said.
“There’s just a lot of reasons, costs, ag labor, that make California no longer ag friendly.”
Lombardo added that agriculture is “strong in Arizona.”
“They grow wine, pumpkins, apples and there’s a lot of greenhouses in Arizona, and greenhouses are being looked at to be one of the solutions for climate change and given Casey’s patents on greenhouse technology and more, the move makes sense,” Lombardo said.
Employees of the former Houweling’s operation were given the option to seek alternative employment at the company’s new location should they voluntarily decide to relocate there.
Farrar told the Business Times that they will “hire anyone that they are letting go that we have a home for.”
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