Dairy Foods has a long tradition of devoting part of the August issue to our “Plant of the Year” winner. Previously, we’d nominate only the dairy plants we’d profiled in the past 18 months, and allowed readers to choose the winning facility. But this year we decided to do things a little differently: We opened up nominations to any exceptional U.S. dairy plant.

Innovations to consumer-ready dairy products such as yogurt, ice cream and cheese get plenty of attention. Innovations to dairy ingredients? Not so much.