Bell Carter Foods Inc

Lindsay Olive Cooperative Sold: A private processor says it is buying the brand and inventory of the financially troubled Lindsay Olive Growers cooperative in Lindsay, Calif. Tim Carter, chief executive of Bell-Carter Foods, said the deal will make his Lafayette-based company the biggest olive processor in California. Lindsay Olives has been the largest single employer in the Tulare County city of 9,000. Sixty-five maintenance workers were let go immediately.

Lindsay Olive Cooperative Sold: A private processor says it is buying the brand and inventory of the financially troubled Lindsay Olive Growers cooperative in Lindsay, Calif. Tim Carter, chief executive of Bell-Carter Foods, said the deal will make his Lafayette-based company the biggest olive processor in California. Lindsay Olives has been the largest single employer in the Tulare County city of 9,000. Sixty-five maintenance workers were let go immediately.

The world's largest olives grow in turn-of-the-century orchards bordering Northern California farm towns such as Oroville, Palermo and Richvale. An estimated 8,000 acres of Sevillano trees yield a variety that is marketed--in agricultural hyperbole--as "jumbo," "colossal" and even " super colossal."