Davisco Reprint.indd - Davisco Foods International, Inc

REPORTS
From left: Marvin Bartlett, director of engineering; Jon Davis,
COO; Mark Spence, Midwest division manager; Dave Kindt,
maintenance manager; Todd Pennings, plant manager; and
Troy Ammann, director of operations.
Photos by Vito Palmisano
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1/7/09 1:41:48 PM
Plant of the Year
Mozzarella curds form in one
of the cheese vats in the make
room at Davisco’s Lake Norden plant.
Pride of the Plains
A grand vision and attention to detail earn accolades
for Davisco’s South Dakota plant.
James Dudlicek DFR Editor
f I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six
sharpening the ax.”
That’s Mark Spence, Midwest division manager of
Davisco Foods International’s Cheese Division, summing up his philosophy about tackling a project. It’s a credo that
appears to be shared by Spence’s colleagues at the Le Sueur, Minn.based cheese and whey ingredients manufacturer. And that mindset
is clearly in evidence at Davisco’s Lake Norden Cheese Co. plant in
Lake Norden, S.D., winner of Dairy Field Reports’ first Plant of the
Year Award.
Before the first shovel of earth was turned, Davisco spent up to
nine months visiting existing cheese plants around the country,
meeting with contractors and interviewing equipment vendors
to see the best of what the industry had to offer, explains Marvin
Bartlett, director of engineering. “It all paid off, for sure,” he says.
Jon Davis, chief operations officer over Davisco’s three cheese
plants, is more emphatic.
“This is as complete a plant as you will find in the country,” he
beams. “The aesthetics, how it’s designed, the quality of the product
and the flexibility it has in terms of processing milk into cheese and
various whey products.”
“I
Davisco Reprint.indd 2
Those factors and more were essential to creating a facility with
an annual cheese output that has more than doubled since 2004 to
an estimated 108 million pounds expected by the end of 2008, as
this article went to press.
That running total is for product that has been sellable since the
first day of operations. “The first vat of cheese we made, we put on
a pizza,” Davis says.
In the midst of a $10 million second phase of expansions,
Davisco has been in Lake Norden since the early 1980s, when
the company acquired a whey plant from Land O’Lakes and
took on the task of processing whey from Land O’Lakes’ cheese
factory in nearby Volga, S.D. Eventually the cooperative closed
that facility, leaving a void in cheese manufacturing for the
region. “They wanted to get out of producing cheese in Volga,”
Davis recalls. “So we basically took over their business. It was a
perfect opportunity.”
In 2002, Davisco started construction on a cheese plant
adjoining the whey plant; it was operational by November 2003.
“We had to connect a brand-new plant with an antiquated plant,”
Davis says. “You can’t see the transition from new to old. It’s like
brand-new, like both parts of the plant were built together.”
1/7/09 1:41:54 PM
Plant of the Year
Cheese blocks are herded into cages that will lower them into
a brine bath (top). Jon Davis takes a sample of mozzarella as it’s
funneled into the block former (above).
Bartlett says the challenge was to incorporate the various processes into the whey plant building. “A corridor system ties the factory
together in a seamless flow of product and process,” he says.
Lake Norden Cheese Co. originally was designed only for pasta
filata mozzarella, but in July 2005 Davisco added a 40-pound-block
tower line to produce cheddar, Monterey jack and parmesan to pick
up the slack during any lulls in the mozzarella market. Lake Norden
produces 30% of the cheese that Davisco manufactures (400 million
pounds at three plants) and all of its pasta filata mozzarella.
Further expansions of both the cheese and whey sides of the business are already in the offing. It’s all to serve the constant demand
of Davisco’s customers, who due to confidentiality agreements must
remain nameless here. “They’re the leading food manufacturers in the
United States and throughout the world,” says Davis, who is justifiably
proud of this plant, and it shows as he talks about it with gusto. “It’s
the who’s who.”
Sharpening the ax
Davis credits the success of Lake Norden to scrupulous planning by the company’s design team that worked arm in arm with
architects, equipment suppliers and even Land O’Lakes. “We leveraged a great deal of LOL’s experience. We didn’t know a whole
lot about producing mozzarella, and LOL’s senior management
gave us a complete open book and access to their technical folks
that did – it wouldn’t have been nearly as successful otherwise,”
Davis says, also noting assistance by Scherping Systems, supplier
of the plant’s cheese vats; Big D Construction served as general
Davisco Reprint.indd 3
contractor and E.A. Bonelli as engineer. “This was such a good
collaborative effort. It was the best people in the industry – an
all-star team.”
And if it’s true as they say, the devil is in the details, Davisco’s
efforts were heaven sent. The Lake Norden plant combines the
best ideas used by cheese plants around the country – like 45-degree-angled window seals that trap less dirt and an enclosed pipe
chase above the plant floor to guard against contamination during
maintenance activities – along with home-grown innovations, like
20,000 linear feet of food-safe, non-porous quartz flooring made by
Cambria, a division of Davisco. “Every door that opens a certain
way, we talked about why it should,” Davis says. “Air flow, product
flow, people flow.”
Spence further explains how safety measures were specifically
designed into the plant.
“Everything’s about food safety,” he says. “Without quality, you
might as well shut the doors. But we bring those two components
together, safety and quality.”
Other measures include additional protective railings on the
manways serving tanker trucks in the receiving area, and HEPA
filters that screen the in-plant air several dozen times each hour.
“When your senior leadership is behind your safety program, it
puts you way ahead of the curve in terms of ultimate success,”
Spence declares.
Equal attention is paid to keeping things moving, including enterprise
versions of Wonderware and Maximo software; DFH Internet reporting
system that allows online monitoring of plant operations from anywhere;
and predictive maintenance programs.
“We typically use the latest and greatest technology that’s available. In this case, we’re on the leading edge,” Davis says.
Plant manager Todd Pennings remarks: “I like being able to check
on the plant while sitting in a hotel room when traveling.”
Further assets include a motion-detecting lighting system in
the warehouse, a CIP room that automatically dispenses chemicals throughout the plant, and an ammonia system built with extra
capacity to handle the upcoming expansions.
The daily routine
Lake Norden receives nearly 3 million pounds of raw milk every
day from farms in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. Along with
the 600,000 pounds of whole milk equivalent brought in from
Davisco’s plant in Jerome, Idaho, Lake Norden processes 3.4 million pounds of milk daily.
There are three bays for raw intake plus a segregated pasteurized bay from which 80% protein and sweet cream are shipped out,
Pennings explains. The loadout bay has its own CIP system “so
there’s no way you can cross-contaminate the product,” he says.
All trucks are completely washed top to bottom after unloading.
“It doesn’t matter if it was washed an hour ago – it gets rewashed
here,” Pennings says.
Spence says “we run a tight ship” when it comes to cleanliness,
leaving the plant ready at a moment’s notice for any kind of inspection. “They can walk in any day and we’re ready for them. Jon doesn’t
notify us ahead of time when a tour is coming, because every day is
a tour day for us.”
A vestibule separates the raw and pasteurized tanks. Condensed
and ultrafiltered skim are offloaded to four other silos; smaller holding tanks contain sweet cream. Each tank is equipped with mixproof
valves to automatically switch between each one.
1/7/09 1:41:59 PM
Plant of the Year
Quality testing is performed at every stage of production (left). DFR Editor
Jim Dudlicek interviews the management team at Lake Norden (above).
AT A GLANCE
Davisco Foods International Inc.
Location: Lake Norden, S.D.
Year built: Cheese plant opened 2003 at site of whey plant
acquired in 1983.
Size: 275,000 square feet on 30 acres, plus 630-acre wastewater
treatment facility and wetlands.
Number of employees: 202
Products made: LMPS
and LMWM mozzarella, and
provolone in 6-, 10- and 20pound blocks and 3.5-inch
diameter rounds, packed
in various configurations;
cheddar, Monterey jack
and parmesan in 40-pound
blocks; WPC 80 and
lactose; custom drying of other non-dairy food products.
Total processing capacity: 320,000 pounds of cheese daily (3
million pounds of milk).
Pasteurization: Milk HTST, 120,000 pounds/hour; UF milk HTST,
72,000 pounds/hour; sweet cream HTST, 7,300 pounds/hour; whey
HTST, 140,000 pounds/hour.
Lines: One cheese vat-and-table line that can serve a pasta filata
mozzarella line or a 40-pound block tower line; six horizontal vats,
four finishing tables, one cooker/stretcher, two rotary molder chillers.
Storage capacity: Raw milk, 2.4 million pounds; condensed, 1.4
million pounds; cooler, 5 million pounds.
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The starter control room operates the five starter tanks with a
combined capacity of nearly 9,000 gallons. Coccus and rod starters
are used, depending on the recipe.
Meanwhile in the pasteurizer room, one unit handles cheese
milk, while another is set up to handle UF skim, with a total capacity of 120,000 pounds per hour. “This area is designed so once we
double the size of the cheese plant, we can hook up another pasteurizer and go,” Pennings says. All tanks, pipes and fittings are clearly
labeled to more easily train new hires, as well as for the benefit of
visitors, he explains.
An ultrafiltration unit allows lactose to be removed before making cheese, thus improving efficiency. Also, if there’s more incoming
milk than can be stored or used quickly, it can be condensed and
shipped to another Davisco plant, Davis explains.
The nerve center of Lake Norden’s pasta filata operations, the
make room currently houses six Scherping horizontal vats that each
can hold 79,000 pounds of mozzarella or provolone cheese. The
vats feed to four finishing tables, a cooker/stretcher and two rotary
molder chillers. “We have one of the simplest and most effective
cheese rooms in the industry,” says Troy Ammann, Davisco’s director of operations. “One person can easily manage the processes, taking the milk and converting it into cheese.”
In the not-too-distant future, Davisco plans to double the size of
the make room as part of the plant’s phase-two expansion. The outside wall is of modular construction that can be moved as a single
unit to its new location, and a temporary wall erected while the
80,000-square-foot addition is built, Spence explains.
The addition will basically mirror the current make room. “That
will accommodate all of the expected expansion of the Interstate 29
milk shed,” Spence says. “We’re keeping up with the dairymen.”
Cheese blocks ejected from the RMCs travel down a flume to be
held in brine for up to five hours in one of 17 brining cages, each
holding a vat’s worth of cheese, about 8,300 pounds. “Each vat goes
to its own cage, so you always have vat integrity,” Penning says.
Freed from their cages, blocks of cheese are rinsed and travel up a
conveyor to the packaging room, passing through a metal detector
along the way; an X-ray machine will soon be added upstream from
the metal detector, Pennings notes.
Cheese blocks are Cryovac’d and packed for shipment. Typical
configurations include bulk boxes of 60 20-pound blocks that are
1/7/09 1:42:11 PM
Plant of the Year
GROWTH AT LAKE NORDEN
Cheese production growth by year:
2004: 52 million pounds
2005: 78 million pounds
2006: 93 million pounds
2007: 104 million pounds
2008: 108 million pounds (estimated)
Davisco recently installed a new high-tech whey drier at Lake
Norden for dairy powders and other custom products.
robotically double-stacked, palleted and wrapped in clear film. The
plant’s most popular product, 20-pound blocks are generally shredded or sliced by the customer.
“In a single day, we can make 6-pound, 10-pound and 20-pound
blocks,” Pennings says, “and we can do 40-pound blocks if we need
to in our cheese towers.”
The cheese tower room was added when mozzarella business fell off
temporarily in the plant’s early going. “This was nothing but a warehouse. We never intended to make 40-pound blocks, but the marketplace helped us justify the added diversification,” Pennings says.
Fed directly from the vats, five towers can each make 1,800
pounds of cheddar or parmesan cheese per hour, forming blocks
that are shrink-wrapped and cased for shipping. “When mozzarella demand softens, we make cheddar; that market is more
liquid with a longer shelf life,” Davis says. “We haven’t had to
make cheddar for two or three years because the market has been
strong [for mozzarella].”
Davis credits Bartlett and his team for the versatile design. “It
looks like it was built for those towers,” he says of the former
warehouse space. “He designed it with the flexibility to handle
many things.”
Finished product winds up in the cold warehouse, which can hold
up to 5 million pounds of cheese. Mozzarella generally ships in four
to five days, while cheddar moves out in about a week. “With mozzarella, we have the micro test [results] within three days [because]
you can pull the sample right away,” Pennings explains. “With cheddar, you have to wait three days.”
The current whey separator room started out as the old truck bay
seven years ago. Here, whey drained from the cheese vats and tables
is run through clarifiers to remove cheese fines. The whey cream
is separated out before the product goes to the plant’s brand-new
whey pasteurizer.
Pasteurized whey is ultrafiltered and the lactose separated out;
80% lactose is siloed for shipment and the permeate evaporated, condensed and dried. The UF, installed in 2006, produces 240 gallons of
water per minute, which gets polished and used for CIP, Pennings
says. “We’re using it twice before it hits the drain,” he says.
Davisco Reprint.indd 5
Lake Norden’s powder-drying capabilities are further leveraged for a flourishing custom products business, including
a national branded sweetener that leaves the plant in 250pound totes.
Expanded once in early 1990s, the powder warehouse got a
44,000-square-foot addition last spring, bringing its capacity to
12 million pounds. In addition to custom products, the warehouse handles lactose in 55-pound bags and 1-ton totes. “Most
of our bags are being shipped to China and the Philippines,”
Spence says.
Fresh from a $3 million expansion including state-of-theart equipment, Lake Norden’s whey department will soon see
further improvements. “We’re going to take all the equipment
we just installed and move it,” says Pennings, into a new whey
50,000-square-foot plant aimed at boosting production of
Davisco’s BiPro branded whey protein isolate.
New product concepts are developed at Davisco’s whey
applications lab in Eden Prairie, Minn., which Davis describes
as “a huge kitchen.” Mitch Davis, vice president of R&D, and his
team are constantly working on whey protein derivative products, the types of products that will continue to transform the
whey fractionation industry. Prototypes are then taken to the
plant level, sometimes at Lake Norden but usually at the headquarters plant in Le Sueur.
Food safety
In addition to the plant’s safety-related design elements,
Davisco mandates strict policies and procedures. All employees are trained at orientation and annually on GMP policies,
security and HACCP programs. HACCP plans are in place
that detail specific food-safety procedures and requirements.
These plans are reviewed quarterly by a multidisciplinary
HACCP team.
“There are certain things we have to do,” Spence remarks,
“and there are other things we do to raise the bar.”
Testing is done on both in-process and finished product
samples to ensure that all products meet required analytical
and microbiological requirements. All products are released by
authorized quality-assurance personnel. “We don’t modify any
of our processes without completely engaging our corporate
quality assurance department,” Ammann notes.
In-house GMP audits are performed monthly by the plant
QC manager. The report is issued to plant and corporate management for follow-up and corrective action. Daily department
walkthroughs are performed and documented by quality technicians to address any potential GMP and security issues. The
plant and all quality programs are audited annually by a thirdparty auditing company.
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Plant of the Year
EXTRAS
Among Davisco Foods International’s suppliers are
the following companies:
AGC Engineering
Allen-Bradley
BMO Capital
Baldor
Bank of America
BetaVac
CFR Membranes
CMS Flavorseal
Cryovac
Damrow
Danisco
DCI
Ecolab
Filtration Engineering
First Bank and Trust
(Brookings, S.D.)
First National Bank
of Pierre (S.D.)
Fristam
Johnson Industries
MetLife
Mettler-Toledo
Okara
Scherping Systems
Stoelting
Videojet
Vilter
Walker Stainless
Westfalia Separator
Wexxar
Spence outlines another processing area to Dudlicek.
All ingredient suppliers are required to provide results of a
current third-party audit or must be audited by plant officials
prior to being approved. A supplier guarantee, allergen statement and specification sheet are required for each ingredient. A
certificate of analysis must accompany each shipment received.
Challenges
Despite their successes, the Lake Norden team faced several challenges during the development of the plant, but the manner in
which they’ve taken on these challenges further speaks to the talents of this award-winning crew.
“One of the biggest challenges was keeping the existing whey
plant running during construction,” maintenance manager Dave
Kindt says, noting that skillful coordination paid off. David further
explains: “We couldn’t afford to be down a day, and we never were.”
Other challenges included concerns of the local municipal government, as well as how to handle wastewater. “We spend more time
on the effluent leaving than the milk coming in,” Bartlett says.
Nitrogen and phosphates are removed at the plant’s high-tech
wastewater treatment facility, and the treated water is released to
a controlled, fenced-off wetland created by Davisco. “It’s a wildlife
preserve,” Pennings says, explaining the wetland is home to game
birds and other animals. “It’s the only place in Hamlin County that’s
safe from pheasant hunting.”
Everyone from the top down pitched in wherever needed to get the
project off the ground and moving along on schedule, Spence says.
“We were putting in 14-, 16-hour days. You’d have an accountant lifting bags of salt. Jon and I were digging out a cheese vat. There was a
lot of camaraderie to get this going,” he says. “It was overwhelming, to
start a plant like this and hit a home run the first go-round.”
From that very first ready-for-market batch of cheese, the Lake
Norden team has successfully met its ongoing daily challenge: producing mozzarella and provolone with the various functionalities
required by different customers. “For example, the cheese could
have the proper amount of fat, salt and moisture, but the primary
concern of the customer is the melt, flavor and stretch on a pizza,”
Ammann explains. “So within the classification of LMPS mozzarella, we can have several customer-specific specs that are tailored
to each customer’s unique requirements for those functional needs.
Our plant and staff have addressed this by doing functionality testing on each vat of cheese at least twice (at two different ages).
Davis adds: “This isn’t new to the existing mozzarella producers,
but it was new to us. Producing cheddar certainly has similar disci-
Davisco Reprint.indd 6
plines in terms of satisfying the customers’ needs, but mozzarella, as
we learned quickly, was a slightly different animal.
“Another challenge is that mozzarella has a relatively short shelf
life and therefore the product is all made to order, and the orders
typically have less than two weeks lead time. This becomes particularly challenging at times of slowing demand, and the milk
is coming in from the farm while the order for cheese is not in
hand. We addressed the fluctuations in demand by installing block
towers, which allow us to product cheese types that can be aged,
thereby allowing us to run at capacity every day.”
Reflecting a sentiment expressed by many processors, Pennings
notes that it’s getting more difficult to attract and retain employees
who are willing to make a long-term commitment to cheesemaking. However, he’s quick to add that Davisco has been successful
at this, and the plant’s turnover is low. “It’s getting harder, but
once you find good people, you do what it takes to keep them,”
Pennings says.
The Lake Norden team seems to take on challenges with skill
and ease, a significant task for a facility that continues to undergo
such dynamic changes.
For example, doubling cheese capacity will yield a lot more
whey to process, Davis notes. “When you do one, you have to consider the ramifications of the other,” he says.
Bartlett adds: “The good thing is, all that was thought of when
we built the original cheese plant.”
And even with the coming changes, the daily routine is not
expected to be disrupted. “You don’t budget or allow for lost production when analyzing capital expansions,” Davis says. “If you
did, most of your capital projects would be stopped somewhere
just after putting them on paper.”
Why South Dakota?
As areas like Idaho’s Magic Valley, New Mexico and West Texas
grow in stature among industrial cheesemaking regions, why did
Davisco – which also has a cheese plant in Idaho – choose Lake
Norden as a base to grow this segment of its business?
Davis points to the expansion of milk production along the
Interstate 29 corridor in Eastern South Dakota and Western
Minnesota. “The growth in the dairy industry is right here, within
five hours of this plant,” he says.
He admits that “putting in a new plant in the Midwest was a
leap of faith,” because the future didn’t look all that bright when
the company launched this venture in 2001. But the Davis family,
1/7/09 1:42:32 PM
HISTORY
Davisco Foods International is a privately held, family-owned
cheese and food ingredient company with an aggressive, entrepreneurial vision. Three generations of confident, risk-taking expansion
have made the company a leader in the dairy industry. Davisco is
committed to technical advancement, customer service and superior quality.
Based in Le Sueur, Minn., Davisco was founded in 1943 by Stanley Davis, with his purchase of the St. Peter Creamery. Davisco is
managed by Stanley’s son, President Mark Davis, and his four sons,
Marty, Mitch, Matt and Jon.
The Davis family owns cheese companies in Le Sueur; Jerome,
Idaho; and Lake Norden, S.D., in addition to food ingredient companies in Le Sueur and Nicollet, Minn.; Lake Norden; and Jerome.
Davisco has sales offices in Minneapolis, Mexico City, Geneva
and Shanghai, and worldwide partners in the Middle East, Japan
and Africa.
With annual sales approaching an estimated $600 million, Davisco produces 370 million pounds of Italian-style and cheddar cheese
per year and is one of the largest suppliers of cheese to Kraft Foods.
Davisco prides itself in its support of local communities by providing
jobs and buying milk from regional farmers.
Meticulous about quality control and excellent customer service,
Davisco has made it a mission to lead the industry in food technology by producing innovative proteins for health and nutrition.
A pioneer in whey protein isolate research, Davisco produces
10 million pounds of whey protein isolates annually. Davisco is the
industry leader in technology and production, accounting for 65%
of whey protein isolates sold worldwide. Whey protein isolates are
found in 50% of grocery products today, including sports drinks, reduced-fat candies, low -fat salad dressings, infant formula, yogurts,
Midwesterners born and bred, felt the region’s good feed supply
and proximity to large population centers were a plus.
The gambit paid off. “My father [Mark Davis, Davisco president]
always thought that the Midwest was the best place to produce milk,
and it has been, in spades,” Jon Davis says. “When my father decided
to go west to Idaho 18 years ago, he always would mention to us that
we would be coming back here to the Midwest to reinvest, that the
Midwest was the area of the country that should be producing much
of its milk, and he was right on.”
According to Pennings, six or seven new dairy farms have been
built in the area within the past two to three years. “As we’ve been
growing, the dairies are growing all around us,” he says. “They’re not
you’re typical dairies – they’re 2,700 head or bigger.”
The company’s relationship with the community has been friendly; Lake Norden’s municipal water tower boldly proclaims, “Cheese
is our whey.” Davis recalls: “There were certainly some growing
pains, but overall it’s a great town to do business in, a great state to
do business in.
“The dairy industry is a heck of an economic engine. A dollar
spent here [by Davisco customers] is seven or eight dollars in the
local economy,” he adds of the plant’s overall impact on its hometown that has a population barely double that of the facility’s work
force. “You want economic vibrancy in a town, put up a cheese and
Davisco Reprint.indd 7
dips, shelf-stable baking mixes
and low-fat cheese sauces.
Davisco produces a variety of
customized whey protein products and a full line of whey protein products, which includes
BiPRO, BioZate, whey protein
concentrate 80%, glycomacropeptide (GMP), alpha-lactalbumin,
lactose and premium deproteinized whey.
In addition, the company operates Davis Family Dairies, a new
venture expected to open this past fall in Nicollet County, Minn.
Operated in cooperation with the University of Minnesota College
of Veterinary Medicine, this new state-of-the art dairy facility will be
a commercially viable operation used to educate veterinary students
in a commercial dairy environment; conduct research in cow health
and management, including emerging practices and products research under a controlled but commercial setting; provide outreach
and continuing education opportunities for dairy veterinarians, dairy
professionals, extension educators and others in the dairy industry;
and be a public demonstration site for modern, high-quality dairy production processes where groups such as producers, international
guests and elementary students can view the dairy by appointment.
The new dairy facility will house more than 4,000 animals and employ more than 30 people. It will serve as a birthing site for more than
6,000 calves per year and milking facilities for 3,000 cows on site.
Beyond the ag sector, the Davis family owns and operates Cambria Natural Quartz Countertops, the only producer of natural quartz
surfaces in the United States. With state-of-the-art facilities, combined with the work ethic of experienced employee teams, Cambria
has rapidly become an industry leader.
powder plant fed by an efficient local supply of milk. It’s a blueprint
for economic development.”
Continuing success
What’s coming next at Lake Norden? The new BiPro whey plant is in
the engineering phase; meanwhile, expansion of the cheese plant will
proceed based on market demand and the further expansion of the
region’s healthy dairy industry, Davis says. “It’s a wait-and-see based on
the milk supply,” he says. “But we don’t expect to be waiting long; we’ve
already had preliminary internal discussion on the design and layout.”
Looking ahead three to five years, Davis expects daily processing
capacity to more than double. “We want to get to 7 million pounds,”
he says, adding that the company also plans to eventually package
whey products for final sale on site, rather than ship out in bulk quantities. Davisco’s R&D team is working “on how best to take it to the
marketplace,” Davis explains.
As for winning DFR’s Plant of the Year Award, Davis heaps the
credit upon the team that designed and operates the facility. “These
guys deserve it,” he declares. “They do a hell of a job.”
And regardless of the accolades, they’re confident they’ve done
things right. “This plant looks as good or better than the day we started it up,” Bartlett says. “I wouldn’t do anything different today than
we did then.” DFR
1/7/09 1:42:36 PM
Plant Close-up
Behind the Scenes
A photo gallery of Davisco Foods' Lake Norden, S.D., plant.
Photos by Vito Palmisano
Vats stir the curd, and another 80,000
pounds of mozzarella cheese is created
in Lake Norden (above). Pasta filata
mozzarella flows into a hopper that feeds
the block former (right).
PLUS
For more behind-the-scenes photos,
visit www.dairyfoods.com/dfr.
Davisco Reprint.indd 8
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Plant Close-up
The plant's home town takes pride in its
leading industry (top). Blocks of cheese are
rinsed as they come out of their brine bath
(above). Cases containing block of mozzarella
are palleted and wrapped for shipment (above
right). Finished product is tested to make sure
it fulfills the customers' needs (right).
Reprinted with permission from Dairy Foods, January 2009 © 2009 | www.dairyfoods.com |
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