Take a look inside Dairy Foods February issue where we profile the innovative Rhino Foods, maker of ice cream sandwiches, cookie dough inclusions and more.
Rhino Foods made a name for itself by developing cookie dough for Ben & Jerry’s. But that’s just part of what makes this Vermont dairy processor and baker noteworthy. The forward-thinking company is a trendsetter in employee relations, too.
Would you loan $1,000 to an employee who encounters an unexpected financial crisis and needs to buy a new water heater? Instead of laying off employees, would you hire them out temporarily to another employer? Do you share your financial statements with all of your employees, not just with senior management?
Rhino Foods measures everything it does. Employees work to a goal and are rewarded when they meet the targets. Management’s reward is a smooth-running organization that fulfills customers’ needs.
A manufacturing facility is like a living organism. Think of production, purchasing, warehousing and quality assurance as cells. Each of these departments has a job to do that in some way touches the other functions. Each has to communicate with the others so that the whole enterprise runs smoothly.
Tea and ready-to-drink (RTD) tea achieved estimated sales of $6.7 billion in 2012, according to Chicago-based market research firm Mintel. And sales are expected to grow to nearly $8 billion by 2014, said Douglas Rash, group vice president of global sales for Treatt, Lakeland, Fla., citing statistics from Rockville, Md.-based Packaged Facts.
Heluva Good!, a brand of f HP Hood LLC, Lynnfield, Mass., expands its cheese line with Heluva Good! BOLD, featuring three flavors — Chipotle Cheddar, Habanero Jack and Special Reserve Extra Sharp Cheddar.
A new hand-scooped chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich is available for a limited time at all Carl’s Jr.and Hardee’s restaurants, subsidiaries of CKE Restaurants Inc., Carpinteria, Calif.
There are few stars in the refrigerated milk category as numbers drop. Flavored milks are among the few that showed increases in dollar and unit sales.
Glanbia Foods, Twin Falls, Idaho, named 4 Brothers Dairy its 2012 Quality Patron of the Year. It gave the four Fitzgerald brothers (Andrew, Jerome, Clem and Louie) an all-expense paid trip to Ireland, Glanbia’s headquarters.
Government rules and programs affect dairy processors and their fleets. For example, there is the call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel efficiency of medium- and heavy-duty trucks beginning in 2017.
By now, we all know that the Mayans weren’t correct. The world did not end on Dec. 21, 2012, but anyone involved in trucking is certainly facing a number of problems and might feel as though the Mayans were onto something.
As sales of nondairy milks alternatives surge, the milk industry fights back with innovations in single-serve packaging and by positioning chocolate milk as a recovery beverage.
The milk industry dodged one bullet this year (thanks to the temporary extension by Congress of the 2008 farm bill, keeping milk prices stable, for now) but the numbers show there’s still a bumpy road ahead.
"It enables us to further enhance how healthier foods, beverages and snacks are developed and marketed," said Jeff Dunn, CEO of Bolthouse Farms.
January 17, 2013
The $5 million Innovation Center houses several test kitchens and a sensory center, which will allow product developers to utilize advanced technologies as they research food and beverage ingredients and products. The 17,900 square foot complex is currently staffed with 40 employees. The center will greatly expand the potential number of products Bolthouse Farms brings to market on an annual basis and enable the introduction of completely new product categories.
Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association will fete Errico Auricchio, Bernard Alberts and Richard Leitner at April 18 event.
January 19, 2013
Errico Auricchio will be honored as a Life Member of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association April 18 and two men, Bernard Alberts and Richard Leitner, will earn WCMA Distinguished Service Awards for their exemplary careers.
Rather than curse the younger generation who are in the dark about how to cook, it’s better to light a candle and show them how to “get ’er done.” That’s the approach taken by two dairy companies, Kraft Foods and Land O Lakes. Dairy Foods honored each with an Editors’ Choice award in our Best New Dairy Products of 2012 program.
Chobani completed the construction of a 1 million-square-foot plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 326 days. The New York-based yogurt maker called it the world’s largest
yogurt manufacturing facility. Ground-breaking was held in December 2011, construction began in January 2012 and the building was completed on Dec. 17, 2012.
Lifeway's coconut-chia kefir pulled in more than 13,000 votes.
January 16, 2013
Lifeway's coconut-chia kefir received the most votes (13,441) in Dairy Foods' Best New Dairy Products of 2012 poll. It was one of 25 dairy foods and beverages nominated by the magazine's editors.
Consumers are all for omega-3s, but many don’t consume the recommended daily amounts. Dairy products are an excellent delivery vehicle, but fortifying dairy foods with the fatty acids is challenging on many levels.
Consumers are hooked on omega-3 fatty acids. And they are likely to stay on the line as research supporting omega-3s’ health benefits continues to amass.
Kimberly Breedlove, director of research & development at Pecan Deluxe Candy Co., Dallas, knows that a truly transcendent inclusion is worth hunting for. When one really hits the mark, she said, it “should make you want to dig around to find each piece and eat it first. It can be that little welcomed surprise you get when taking a bite of your favorite ice cream that makes you smile and brag about it to your friends and family.”
AGC has a new fixed footprint, automatic hydraulic open-close frame, model AR51-D, which allows processors to install a new HTST/plate heat exchanger unit and select a frame size large enough for any future increased flow.
Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced its Exactive Plus system, the company’s latest benchtop liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system for high-throughput screening, identification and quantification of compounds in complex matrices.
The PerkinElmer AxION direct sample analysis system, integrated with the AxION 2 Time of Flight mass spectrometer, can directly ionize samples and draw straight into the MS.
Flexible enough for use in the QA/QC laboratory or at-line, CEM’s new FAST Trac Analyzer provides fast and accurate fat and moisture determinations in dairy powders.
The new SALD-2300 laser diffraction particle size analyzer from Shimadzu Scientific Instruments measures wet or dry materials to ensure product quality.
Bio-Rad manufactures products for food safety testing. Its iQ-Check line of validated real-time PCR test kits for detection of pathogens utilize shortened enrichment times (less than 24 hours).
Asahi/America Inc., in conjunction with Polytetra GmbH, offers all-thermoplastic, corrosion-resistant heat exchangers that are designed and built per customer specification.
The G.P.E. Process Equipment DR series scraped surface heat exchanger/evaporator is designed to heat, cool, or concentrate a wide variety of products, including highly viscous or heat-sensitive products such as caramel.
GEA Niro Soavi aseptic homogenizers have the aseptic technology that uses sterile condensate instead of live steam to flush the aseptic chambers installed on the machine.
Consumer’s acceptance of the idea that yogurt, a fermented (cultured) milk, is “good for you” has been so widespread that it has attracted other marketers who are trying to figure out how to capitalize on its popularity.
If product is spoiled or damaged, then it doesn’t matter how “green” or sustainable the packaging is. Dairy processors are moving beyond waste and recyclability and taking a holistic view of product packages.
While cost is the top factor driving the packaging industry today, sustainability concerns will dominate packaging industry work in 10 years in both Europe and North America, according to a recent study conducted by Packaging World magazine and DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers. Consumers also care increasingly about the environment, and they expect the products they buy to be produced in an environmentally responsible way. Milk is no exception.
Greek-style frozen yogurt is a product that emulates the properties associated with the success of cultured Greek yogurt. Those properties involve primarily protein and acidity (tartness) levels higher than those of conventional yogurt.
Tetra Pak, Lausanne, Switzerland, acquired Minneapolis-based Filtration Engineering Co., which specializes in the design, construction and commissioning of membrane filtration systems used in the areas of milk, whey and specialized waste treatment systems.
Chr. Hansen, Hørsholm, Denmark, received the “2012 European Product Leadership Award in Probiotics” from Frost & Sullivan, a global research and consultancy company.