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Magic Show
by James Dudlicek
New Idaho plant lets Gossner Foods boost capacity to
meet demand for cheese.
“We don’t know what the future holds, but we’ve got
a lot of room to expand,” Dolores Gossner Wheeler says, surveying the
open space in the make room of her company’s new Swiss cheese plant
in Heyburn, Idaho.
It could be used to make more Swiss cheese, says the
president and chief executive officer of Gossner Foods Inc., or for aseptic
milk to augment the operation at the company’s headquarters two hours
away in Logan, Utah. Or maybe the space can accommodate a specialty-cheese
operation, as that segment of the industry continues to grow.
Whatever that next product, it’s clear the new
$30 million facility positions Gossner Foods well for future growth.
“This gives us lots of possibilities for future expansion,”
says Dave Thomas, general manager of Idaho operations.
And that’s something that the state of Idaho is
hoping for as well, as it gets acquainted with the newest resident of Magic
Valley, a region of southern Idaho that’s become so attractive to
cheese manufacturers that it has elevated the Gem State to the
third-largest cheese-producing state in the nation.
The state is happy to see jobs return to the site as
well. Gossner’s new plant is located on the site of the former J.R.
Simplot Co. potato processing plant that closed in November 2003. Simplot
donated the site to be developed as an industrial park; Gossner Foods is
the first tenant.
“We had a very aggressive timeline,” Thomas
says of the plant’s construction, which began in October 2004 and
involved 110,000 square feet of new construction added to an existing
40,000-square-foot building. “We had a customer looking for product
to be made. We started making cheese a year and a day after breaking
ground. It was pedal to the metal for the whole year.”
The company had originally planned to expand its plant
in El Centro, Calif., but was drawn to Idaho by several factors, including
an abundant supply of both milk and water, proximity to the company’s
home base, an excellent wastewater treatment system and a business-friendly
state government that has offered assistance like $650,000 in grants for
worker training and site improvements.
“But no matter what investment you make, it comes
down to people,” says Thomas, who left his previous post as president
and CEO of Glanbia Foods in nearby Twin Falls to oversee Gossner’s
Heyburn project. “We had 500 applicants for 60 jobs.”
Acknowledging the newness of the plant and the need to
train many novices to the cheese industry, Thomas decided against creating
a supervisory structure at the outset. Instead, he opted to wait and see
how employees gained experience on the job and earned leadership roles.
“After six months, we’re starting to see people rise to the
challenge,” he says.
The Eyes Have It
Gossner’s Magic Valley plant contains the latest
high-tech cheesemaking equipment available. But, of course, the basics
never really change.
The plant receives milk seven days a week (it
manufactures five days) in its twin receiving bays, which can accommodate
semis with tandem trailers. All milk comes from Idaho farms within a
30-mile radius, 70 percent of it shipped directly from farms, the rest
through a local cooperative. Magic Valley can also accept extra milk from
Logan if that plant is running at capacity, Thomas says.
All milk must pass basic labs onsite before offloading;
samples are sent to the lab in Logan for more extensive testing and
cataloguing. Receiving is computerized with an on-screen schematic; all
areas of the plant can be monitored from any computer terminal in the
facility.
Raw milk is pasteurized and run through a separator for
adjustment of protein and fat levels using an infrared system. Touch-screen
controls allow an operator to set the desired ratio of casein to fat, a
critical step in the creation of Swiss cheese.
“We want the same amount of protein in every
batch so we can produce the same amount of cheese in every batch,”
Thomas says, noting the system will fill the cheese vats to the proper
level needed to maintain that consistency. “It’s a very
efficient, user-friendly system. It gives us consistent quality.”
In the make room, the six cheese vats are operated by
touchscreen controls with password access, able to call up preprogrammed
recipes for various types of regular and reduced-fat Swiss; most product
made here is Gossner’s trademark mild Swiss. “These are the
latest generation in cheese vats,” Thomas says.
Each vat fills three to four times each day, taking an
hour to fill and three hours to cook, churn and cut, and then running a
washdown sequence before the next batch of cheese. Each vat is outfitted
with two outlets for quick cleaning; leak-detecting mixproof valves allow
vats to continue making cheese while others are being cleaned.
Beyond the high-tech gadgetry, the basics of
cheesemaking are the same: fill the vats with milk, add the cheese
cultures, churn the liquid until the curds form, drain off the whey. The
vats’ agitator blades cut the curds when run the opposite direction.
Thomas notes there are seasonal differences in the
production of Swiss cheese. In the winter, milk contains more solids than
it does in the summer, when vats need to be filled higher to get the same
level of solids for consistent cheese year round, he explains.
Lab technicians, stationed in an office on the outer
edge of the make room, check vat production regularly, Thomas says.
“It’s critical for Swiss that we hit the right fat and protein
levels,” he stresses.
Cheese is pumped from the vats to a filling station in
the press room, where the cheese travels through a maze of pipes to a
rotating device that sends bursts of curds and whey slurry through 16 lines
into four block molds. The custom equipment was manufactured in Finland and
assembled by local contractors. “The point of the distribution system
is to evenly distribute curds in the molds to get a smooth, even fill and
minimize curd disruption,” Thomas says, explaining that such
disruption could result in too many holes or “eyes” in the
finished cheese.
It takes about 25 minutes to fill the molds, which are
made of perforated stainless steel to allow for whey drainage. The molds
are lidded and put under a heavy press to expel more whey for between 12
and 24 hours. Traveling on a conveyor around the perimeter of the press
room, the molds are uncovered and the cheese is removed by the insertion of
non-stick “fingers” around the edges. A guillotine cuts each
1,000-pound formed
block into four pieces, which continue down a flume into the brine tank.
The molds and lids are washed for reuse, their status
constantly monitored by touchscreen control. “We have enough molds
for 10 vats and could fill them twice a day,” Thomas says.
“This is the room that’s been the most challenging for us
mechanically because of all the servos and heavy lids.”
Steel fencing surrounds all the machinery in the mold
room as a safety precaution; if a gate is opened, the system shuts down
automatically.
In the next room, the sweeping brine tank has 20 lanes
that each can hold one vat’s worth of cheese. Blocks are held for a
day in the brine, which is continually circulated to keep the temperature
consistent. Salinity is checked daily, with salt added as needed; a
filtration system keeps the brine clear.
Released from brining, the 250-pound cheese blocks
travel up a conveyor to be boxed for 60 days of aging. An “air
knife” blows residual moisture off the blocks, which are then pushed
into a plastic bag and vacuum sealed before they’re boxed. Pallets of
boxed cheese are staged in corridor and moved to the mobile racking system
in the make cooler, where they stay for up to two weeks. The moving rack
system is designed to handle the extreme weight of the cheese and actually
works better when fully loaded, Thomas explains.
From the make cooler, cheese is moved to the warm room
to be held at room temperature, with large fans used to circulate the air
to maintain a consistent temperature for each block. The blocks are turned
several times during the aging process to ensure consistent pressure and
temperature critical to Swiss cheese. It’s also here that graders
take plugs of aging cheese to monitor eye development.
“It’s almost like it’s alive,”
Wheeler remarks. “Because you don’t know exactly what
it’s going to do, you can’t get totally confident making Swiss
cheese.”
Following its stay in the warm room, cheese is moved to
the finished cooler, then removed from its aging containers for final
packaging. Some cheese — like 7- and 14-pound deli loaves — is
packaged on site, but much is trucked to Logan’s more extensive
packaging operation for completion. Plans call for eventual expansion of
Heyburn’s packaging activities.
Rounding out the Heyburn facility is the whey
operation. A hundred pounds of milk yields just 9 pounds of Swiss cheese,
so Gossner takes that 91 pounds of drained whey and creates whey protein
concentrate that’s sold for ingredient use and lactose permeate that
winds up in cattle feed.
Still to come in the Magic Valley, a retail store at
the corner out in front of the plant, a chalet-style building with a
balcony offering views of the Snake River across the road. The store will
offer cheese, fresh curds, butter, ice cream and other products like the
well-patronized store in Logan. A cheddaring table stands ready to make
curds, a storage area will be transformed into a butter room and ice cream
will be made in a room segregated from the cheesemaking areas as a nod to
allergen concerns over inclusions.
Cache and Carry
Meanwhile, the Logan plant is busy packaging output
from Heyburn and El Centro as well as its own make room. According to Logan
cheese plant manager Dave Larsen, more than 1,500 SKUs are packaged here,
about 20 percent for Gossner’s own brand, the rest for an array of
contract packaging customers in the branded, private label and foodservice
arenas.
Gossner makes all the Swiss, muenster and mini horns it
packages, but procures other varieties like cheddar and mozzarella from
other processors for packaging in various formats. Opened four years ago,
the nine-line packaging operation (a 10th is expected to be added this
year) handles deli loaves and chunk cheeses of various weights,
exact-weight slices and shreds.
The packaging process begins when the 270-pound blocks
of cheese are cut in half.
“That’s the first point we get to see what
the eye formation looks like,” Larsen says, repeating one of the
difficulties of Swiss production. “We’re looking for dime- to
nickel-size eyes, evenly spaced through the entire block.”
As the cheese passes through the slicer, graders check
eye size and separate the pieces into various grades. Swiss logs are
wrapped in plastic, then run through a metal detector, shrink tunnel and
hot water bath before being weighed, labeled and cased. Cases are
palletized, with about a ton of product on each, and each pallet is
shrink-wrapped.
A second line runs chunk Swiss, while four others
handle slices of various configurations, like shingles, stacks and twin
packs. Swiss logs are fed at an angle into the slicer, which automatically
places paper between each slice. Each stack of slices is weighed;
wrong-weight stacks are kicked to the side for a line employee to adjust
and return to the line for packaging.
Portable zipper machines can be rolled out to run lines
of zip-pouch cheeses, Larsen says.
“Every line is unique,” he notes.
“The equipment is a little bit different on each one.”
About 260 people work in the Logan cheese plant; the
packaging department is its largest employment center. Another 175 work at
the aseptic milk plant next door.
The UHT plant receives up to 3 million pounds of milk
per week, according to plant manager Kelly Luthi. “We run everything
through a pasteurization system first,” Luthi explains. “We
don’t have to, but it’s how we standardize the milk.”
Logan’s aseptic milk filling operation utilizes
four sterilization systems, each with a dedicated sterile tank and running
at 1,500 gallons per hour. “If the filler shuts down, we still want
to be able to continue to sterilize the product using the sterile tank as a
buffer,” Luthi says.
Raw milk enters the system at 40 degrees F and is
heated up to 285 for a few seconds; filling commences when it cools down to
about 85 degrees. Three blending systems allow for processing up to three
varieties of milk at one time.
There are six aseptic filling machines, three for
liter-size (32 ounce) containers and three for single-serve (8 ounce) drink
boxes. Packaging stock gets a bath in a 35 percent peroxide solution to
sterilize the paper at 70 degrees C and is run through a set of rollers
before being formed into a continuous tube. This tube is filled with milk,
after which a set of metal jaws clamp around the tube to form the
individual containers. Single-serves receive straws, while the larger boxes
are fitted with reclosable plastic caps. Filled boxes are packed into cases
— 12 quarts or 27 single-serves per case.
“We’ve been doing shelf-stable for 20-plus
years,” Luthi says. “It’s such a simple concept, but a
lot of people don’t understand it. We’ve made a lot of headway.
It’s becoming more recognized.”
Gossner’s UHT plant is 150,000 square feet, of
which 110,000 is warehouse space, Luthi says. “One [aseptic] bottle
filler would occupy the same space as my six aseptic [box] fillers,”
he notes.
Safety and Security
As with other aspects of the start-up, Logan plant
personnel helped set up the safety program at the new Magic Valley
facility, with the quality control manager
organizing safety training for various
plant functions. “The most important thing employees have to think
about is getting home safe to their families,” Thomas says.
Significant investment was made in equipment with
integral safety features, and the company gets its suppliers involved with
things like chemical training and personal protective gear. “In a new
factory, a lot of these people haven’t been exposed to cheese
plants,” Thomas says.
For food safety, too, the Heyburn team is working with
the folks in Logan to develop a HACCP plan. The plant’s primary audit
survey is centered on key customers, Thomas explains.
Walls in the make room are coated with a material
similar to that used for pickup truck bed liners, creating an impervious
surface for an enhanced sanitary environment. A storage mezzanine, hidden
in the ceiling 21 feet above the plant floor, allows access to utilities
without disrupting plant operations.
Security measures include key-card entry to each area
of plant, with access assigned by job task. There are 13 cameras monitoring
activity throughout the plant. “From a biosecurity standpoint,
it’s state of the art,” Thomas says.
In Logan, too, “we really pride ourselves on
quality,” Luthi says, explaining the plant’s event-based
quality-control program. In addition, a new lab testing system coming on
line will cut sample incubation time from five days to 48 hours.
“With this system, we’ll be releasing [aseptic] product in four
days instead of seven days,” he says.
Of course, while Gossner relies on technical advances
to improve its manufacturing operations, its deeper faith is in its
employees to make it all run smoothly. As Allen Wheeler, Dolores’
husband and a company director, puts it, “When you have dedicated
people like we have, it doesn’t get any better.”
GOSSNER FOODS
PLANT AT A GLANCE
PLANT AT A GLANCE
Location: Heyburn, Idaho
Opened: October 2005
Size: 150,000 square feet
Employees: 60
Products made: Swiss cheese, whey protein
concentrate, lactose permeate.
Capacity: 1 million pounds of milk daily.
Milk storage: 3 silos @ 50,000 gallons raw
(1.3 million pounds), 2 silos @ 10,000 cream (170,000 pounds).
HTST: 50,000 pounds per hour.
Make room: Six vats, each producing 4,000
pounds of cheese per hour.
Press room: 44 1,000-pound molds.
Storage: Make cooler, 1.8 million pounds; warm
room, 3.5 million pounds.
MUENSTER MASH
Gossner goes right to the source in California’s
Imperial Valley.
Considering
Gossner Foods’ close relationship with its farmer producers,
it’s fitting that one of its three cheese plants was inspired by one
of them.
In 1999, the company partnered with Jim Kuhn of
KF Dairy in El Centro, Calif., to open
an on-farm cheese plant. Gossner’s Imperial
Valley Cheese produces 35,000 pounds of Swiss and muenster cheese a day,
processing about 320,000 pounds of milk daily, mostly provided by KF Dairy.
“We intend to grow that business,”
says Dolores Gossner Wheeler, president and chief executive officer of
Gossner Foods. “That’s where we want to make all the muenster
for the organization. It’s really just a make room, and then we move
the product up here [to Logan, Utah]; the Swiss is actually cured up here.
We are going to add on a large cooler down there, which should take place
this spring.”
A delegation from Gossner Foods was on hand at
Dairy Forum in January for a ceremony in which Kuhn was posthumously
honored as the 2006 Innovative Dairy Farmer of the Year. Kuhn died in an
auto accident last year; his widow, Heidi, is continuing his work to grow
KF Dairy and Imperial Valley Cheese.
“I see growth coming at Imperial
Valley,” Wheeler says. “We see a lot of interest right now in
natural muenster cheese. We’re looking at maybe doing some specialty
cheeses down there if the opportunity comes.”
Imperial Valley Cheese is run by plant manager
Clemente Russo, who oversees a team of 25 employees in the
25,000-square-foot facility.
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