H.J. Baker breaks ground on new Stockton port facility

H.J. Baker breaks ground on new Stockton port facility    Westport, Conn.-based H.J. Baker & Bro. said Thursday it has broken ground on a new sulphur facility at the Port of Stockton.
   The new production facility, being constructed at the current H.J. Baker sulphur forming site at the port, will be the third facility in North America to operate under the H.J. Baker subsidiary of Tiger-Sul Products. The facility will initially have one pastillation belt — pastillation creates small wafer-like pellets of product — with room for expansion, and is expected to be fully operational in the second quarter of 2008. It will produce the Tiger-Sul brand-name sulphur and fertilizer products.
   Owned by the Smith family for more than four generations, H.J. Baker has produced sulphur and fertilizer products since 1850.
   H.J. Baker owns and operates two California sulphur processing, storage and export facilities — one in the port of Stockton and one near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The two facilities, originally commissioned in the early 1980s, have a combined annual production capacity of 720,000 tons of product.