This co-manufacturer is better together, and has quadrupled its processing facility with a clear focus on growing other companies.
As a leading co-manufacturer in the pet treat space, Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery is clearly focused on helping its customers expand into new product areas. Kurt Stricker, president, and Lexie Berglund, director of sales and marketing of Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery, see their role with customers as much more than a supplier; they view the company as a partner in its customers’ future success. And the investment in the new, $32 million facility completed this past December is a big bet on those partners.
“We built our business taking in smaller customers and grew with them,” Berglund says. “We offered them a lot of flexibility. Some manufacturers wouldn’t take on customers for less than a truckload or two and we were willing to produce 300 lbs. or 500 lbs. initially to help them figure out how to efficiently package their products.”
Pet Food Processing visited the co-manufacturer's 212,000-sq.-ft. processing plant in Harvard, Illinois to tour and speak with Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery on its accomplishments in pet treat manufacturing.
The new facility was designed from the ground up on 22 acres. Out of the 212,000 sq. ft., nearly half, 100,000 sq. ft., is warehouse and storage; 11,000 sq. ft. is office, and another 100,000 sq. ft. is dedicated to processing and packaging. The processing space is divided into four rooms with their own focus: baking, hot extrusion, cold extrusion and dry blending. Each processing room feeds into a common packaging area. The new facility is SQF approved and FSMA compliant.
Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery relies on its entire team to keep production rolling. Schenck Process Group engineered the equipment and process that connects all the equipment from the silos to the packaging room, making it as efficient as possible. Everything from the ingredient warehouse to processing and final packaging is connected throughout the building. The new facility also has a high-quality dust control system that the team engineered.
Front Row (from left): Jarden Gratz (Chief Operating Officer), Kurt Stricker (President), Lexie Berglund (Director of Sales and Marketing), Tom MacKenzie (Plant Manager)
Back Row (from left): Victor Figueroa Mendez (Baking Supervisor), Sarah Lund (Director of Marketing), Dave Freymiller (SQF Practitioner), Cathy Wright (Director of Cold Extrusion), Cameron McGuire (Director of Hot Extrusion), Dave Bernau (Purchasing Manager), Katie Fritz (Account Executive), Carlos Huicochea (Cold Extrusion Supervisor)
Kurt Stricker, president of the co-manufacturer, explains that in the more than 20 years since he opened Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery in 1997, he’s seen human-like pet treats take over the market. Although Stricker says he helps his customers respond to the humanization trend, he may very well have helped start it.
Stricker grew up working in his family’s bakery owned by both sets of his grandparents and eventually his parents. As one of three brothers working in the family business in Harvard, Stricker decided to strike out on his own. After meeting a woman at an equipment auction in Chicago who had been producing humanized pet treats, Stricker knew that was something he could produce. He had never seen a pet treat that looked like human food. He looked at small boutique pet shops and large national pet specialty retailers in and around Chicago and found they weren’t offering any product like that, or if they were it was very expensive.
Stricker began making dog treats using ingredients he was familiar with from his experience at the family bakery. Today the focus is still on human quality ingredients and creating the cleanest ingredient panels possible.
Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery primarily produces baked pet treats, growing by an average of 30% each year in doing so. The company now has three band ovens with the addition of a new line from Reading Bakery Systems, Robesonia, Pennsylvania. The goal for the tunnel ovens is to run them 24/7.
Two of the band ovens are from Baker Perkins. One is 150-ft. long, and the other is 120-ft. long with a Radio Frequency Macrowave at the end for drying.
The Radio Frequency Macrowave, attached to the end of the Baker Perkins band oven, is used for larger products that are not grain free and for the grain-free formulas that hold a lot more water. The macrowave technology removes the remaining water without adversely affecting the appearance or texture of the finished product.
Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery produces grain-free, organic, GMO-free, wheat-, corn- and soy-free products.
“If you’re going to feel good about giving your pet some kind of treat, it might as well have some benefit to them as well, even if it’s a general health benefit,” Stricker says. “You see a lot of hip and joint, skin and coat, or calming products out there now that are defined for one function or another. The trend is to make the treat something good for the dog or for a problem it has.”
This Reading Bakery Systems (RBS) machine is a complete rotary-moulded biscuit line designed for air flow balance and heat control. It includes an AMF batch mixer, portable inline dough feed system, heavy duty design rotary moulder for large diameter die rolls, convection oven and a 3-pass dryer. The system’s main purpose is to supply formed biscuits. The system was specifically designed so Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery has the flexibility to run different types of products through the oven and dryer. The dough feed and rotary moulder can be replaced with an RBS Low Pressure Unit, which offers coextrusion capabilities.
The company has around 40 molds of which about half are customer owned. A rotary mold can cost between $15,000 for the smaller tunnel ovens or as much as $30,000 for the larger RBS oven.
With the larger space for the baking operations and the new Reading Bakery Systems line, Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery has the capacity to double their baking output, not just with an added line but also with the efficiencies gained through automation.
Hot extrusion is one of the co-manufacturer’s new capabilities. The output potential for the company’s new hot extrusion capabilities far exceeds the potential baking output, according to Stricker, and almost all the hot extrusion output is new business.
All three of its hot extrusion lines are from Wenger Manufacturing, Sabetha, Kansas, which Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery uses to produce produce kibble, long goods, semi-moist products, dental chews and co-extruded chews. The hot extrusion room is equipped with one Wenger TX85 twin screw extruder, one Wenger TT760 thermal twin screw extruder and the Wenger X25, a 5¼-in. diameter single screw extruder.
Three holding tanks from MacProcess allow Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery the flexibility to mix different percentages of products into packages.
There are five automated paths that bring finished product into the packaging room. As product comes in on conveyors, the plant is designed to allow the destination to change depending on the packaging required. That automated flexibility will have a huge impact on overall production efficiency.
Having more space for access to ingredients was a key driver in the layout and design of the new building. Ingredient storage is now separate from warehouse space. The company stocks about 1,000 different ingredients on Bradford Systems moveable racks. They have room for almost 1,800 pallets which is a 50% increase from conventional pallet racking in the same space. With the space-saving moveable racks, they gained an extra 600 spaces.
With the new facility, the co-manufacturer’s investments in other companies and willingness to keep processes flexible, Pedigree Ovens and The Pound Bakery is poised for sustained growth. Berglund says the company is projecting a 50% growth for 2018 and looking to double their business by 2019.