What started as an FFA project in 1986 not only put Larry George through college, it spawned a business that now handles over half the hazelnuts produced in the U.S. and continues to change the face of the hazelnut industry.

“I would take hazelnuts from my parents’ farm in Newberg, dry them and have them shelled at a neighboring farm,” George said. “Then I’d have them roasted and either chocolate-coated or salted and put them in small retail packages that I sold during college.”

By the time he graduated, George realized that, because hazelnuts were much more expensive than competing products such as almonds, the margins on those small retail packages were not scalable for industry and insufficient to support much more than one or two families.

At that point George turned to buying nuts from local farmers and selling them wholesale.

Today, George Packing Co. and Northwest Hazelnut Co., owned by Larry George and his brother, Shaun George, with Oregon plants in Hubbard, Salem and Newberg, is the country’s largest processor of hazelnuts, a crop grown almost entirely in the Willamette Valley.

“We have aligned our interests with our growers’ interests, and they know they’re going to get all this upside as long as the market stays strong,” George said. “Our job is to maximize efficiency and to be constantly developing new specialized niche markets that bring Oregon farmers the highest returns.”

Last year’s launch of their new product, Nutlicious, a hazelnut butter with three times the nuts and 40% less sugar, is right in line with their model.

“While whole kernels move very fast in the market, the broken pieces don’t, and what’s exciting is that we can now recapture those byproducts and turn them into some really high-end products that do well for our farmers,” George said. “We made this breakthrough that no one else has with a straight hazelnut butter and it’s unbelievably good.

“And, with all the new plantings still coming on, we are confident of a good return on our investment.”