Welcome to the virtual tour of Cargill Salt's San Francisco Bay Area salt works. On this tour, you'll see how we use the ancient technique of harvesting salt from bay water with the help of the sun and wind. You'll also see some of the modern tools we use to help harvest and refine 500,000 tons of salt per year.

Our tour will only take a few minutes - but salt making here in the Bay Area is a five-year process, from the time we take in water from the San Francisco Bay until we scrape the salt from our crystallizer beds and refine it. For this tour we divide the salt making process into three areas:

• Our solar ponds and plant site where the salt is concentrated, crystallized and harvested
• The bright, white salt stacks where salt is stored until we refine it
• Our salt refinery, where salt is washed, processed and packaged