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HP Hood Takes the Fast Track to Expansion

An idle cultured dairy products plant is converted into a technologically advanced plant that produces and packages fluid milk for extended shelf life dairy beverages by installing technologies to advance the facility’s food safety and control systems.

HP Hood worker at HMI
Shibuya ESL Liquid filling equipment for HDPE and PET bottles provides an ultra-clean filling and sealing environment. Features include programmable weight-controlled filling, data collection of filling and sealing operations, automated cleaning system, and CIP monitoring and trending.
Photo by Pixel Pro Video.

If there were an award given for fast-track beverage manufacturing projects, HP Hood LLC’s Batavia, New York, dairy and nondairy beverage processing facility would likely be a top contender for speed of scale-up. 

In the summer of 2017, HP Hood purchased an existing 334,000-sq-ft yogurt manufacturing plant previously operated by Mueller-Quaker from Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). 

DFA purchased the property in 2016 from Mueller-Quaker, but never intended to use it as a production facility. HP Hood seized this real estate opportunity to not only expand its market share, but to create a state-of-the-art facility with a $200 million investment in a major expansion and renovation project.

By the summer of 2018, Hood had produced its first saleable product, and, in 2019, the Batavia facility was named one of ProFood World’s Manufacturing Innovation Award winners.

Initially, Hood added a batch tank room, a sugar receiving room with storage capabilities and an aseptic tank room, and expanded the packaging area. By the time production started in 2018, the facility stood at 360,000 sq ft. 

In mid-2019, the plant grew to 444,000 sq ft with the addition of an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) refrigerated storage warehouse. The ASRS is rack supported, has nine robotic cranes and is capable of storing 24,000 pallet positions. It is poised for startup as testing continued at press time. 

Tetra Therm Aseptic VTIS systems provide automated continuous flow that heat product and maintain product temperature for a short duration, then cool the product to packaging temperature.Tetra Therm Aseptic VTIS systems provide automated continuous flow that heat product and maintain product temperature for a short duration, then cool the product to packaging temperature. provide automated continuous flow that heat product and maintain product temperature for a short duration, then cool the product to packaging temperature.Photo by Pixel Pro Video.

Total revamp, smart reuse

The first part of renovating the existing plant was to remove all the yogurt equipment. This included processing equipment, fillers, packaging and coolers. Hood held an auction to sell some of the equipment, then proceeded to gut a majority of the plant.

New drains, floors and walls were installed throughout the facility as well as new cooling towers. “Eight new exterior tanks were installed for ingredient/product storage,” according to Plant Manager Mike Corporon, that added 500,000 gal of capacity.

Hood was able to reuse the raw milk receiving and storage and much of the utility systems, such as steam, compressed air and water filtration systems. The previous plant owner also had a unique refrigeration system, where ammonia was captured in the engine room and glycol was transferred throughout the building for air conditioning, process cooling, etc., which Hood maintained. 

The existing plant actually had some good bones to it, says Keith Perkey, vice president of Haskell’s food and beverage division. Haskell supported Hood in this project and was also the firm that designed and built the original facility. While some of the existing process and packaging equipment were reused, Haskell had to assess the process piping, valving and control systems. “We ended up reusing some of the packaging equipment,” says Perkey, such as repurposing palletizing stretch wrappers and conveyors.

Several valve matrices and mix-proof valves were added to create efficient processing systems. In a plant of this size with multiple clean-in-place (CIP) cycles, Hood also decided to install turbidity sensors and other control upgrades to improve efficiencies. 

The plant conversion included the addition of a single-use CIP system, states Corporon. “This system is designed to minimize the risk of cross-contamination and to optimize the chemical concentration for each cleaning circuit.” The Batavia facility has five single-use systems capable of cleaning more than 30 different circuits. The entire CIP process is automated and monitored, and each CIP cycle is electronically recorded into a database for historical data- keeping requirements, Corporon adds.

packaging line with camera inspectionAll packaging lines have camera inspection to ensure the product carton and label matches the product produced by the filler. When the container passes the trigger sensor, the camera takes a photograph. The system directs rejects depending on inspection results.Photo by Joyce Fassl

Getting it done right the first time

When designing the new facility, food safety was a definite priority. Hood wanted to create a best-in-class plant and to meet or exceed regulatory requirements. 

“We considered challenges experienced in other food manufacturing facilities and learnings from other industry professionals in the facility design,” says Corporon.

As FDA requirements change over the years, it’s easier to meet them with a new plant, he states, as well as implement equipment and building designs made to meet regulatory requirements with proper preventive maintenance, cleaning and operation.

“Our food safety management system is an all-encompassing, progressive, right-the-first-time design,” says Matt Weist, the Batavia plant’s quality assurance manager. “We have established policies and programs that require all functional and support groups to focus on performing their tasks with food safety as the foundation of every action.”  

The program is designed to be process-improvement driven. Each part of the system is evaluated regularly once in place and improved to make the program continue to be better. “After that, we do it again, and evaluate the system again,” Weist states. “The purpose is to ensure we are continually looking at our program to make sure we challenge ourselves to have the best system we can, and reduce or eliminate any risk found.”

For example, the logging and tracking systems for the raw milk pasteurizing systems were upgraded to comply with USDA regulations. Hood has added product type and timing of run length or time between system cleaning. This helps the plant ensure it is meeting FDA’s pasteurized milk ordinance (PMO) requirements.  

“We have programming alerting when 72 hours is met for required tank washes. We also have added electronic review and verification of CIPs with our system,” Corporon states. “FactoryTalk from Rockwell Automation certainly helps us meet PMO electronic records requirements and ensure we are meeting time/temperature holding and CIP requirements.”

Hood’s quality and sanitation teams reviewed and enhanced the existing plant’s food safety standards with additional cleaning and foaming stations. In addition, teams from both Haskell and Hood attended Food Safety Modernization Act training to ensure they built a world-class fluid dairy products manufacturing facility.

The SQF-certified facility has received New York State Grade A milk approval, provides direct shipping to customers, and receives 40 milk tankers per week from local farms with 200 outbound trucks per week.

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