A look inside HP Hood's Sacramento plant

HP Hood fills 600 bottles a minute on its new aseptic line in its Sacramento, Calif., plant. The company processes dairy and nondairy beverages in aseptic and extended shelf life packages.

Bottles whirl through the aseptic rotary filler in Sacramento, Calif.

The high-speed rotary filler sanitizes, fills and caps low-acid beverages at the rate of 600 bottles a minute.

Aseptic plant manager Gina Dezzani and director of operations Mike Hardy watch filled bottles approach the sleever in the aspetic filling room.

Mike Newell (left), director of business development, says having ESL capabilities on the West Coast allows the East Coastbased Hood to better respond to the needs of national customers. — Mike Newell (left), director of business development, says having ESL capabilities on the West Coast allows the East Coast-based Hood to better respond to the needs of national customers.

Director of operations Mike Hardy (below) looks after the welfare of his employees.of national customers. — Director of operations Mike Hardy looks after the welfare of his employees. He developed a lanolin-rich soap for their use because the frequency of hand washing was harsh on the skin.

The dairy processing room is a jungle gym of pipes, pumps and valves — The processing room (left) is a jungle gym of pipes, pumps and valves. Raw milk is pasteurized and homogenized here

The ESL rotary plastic filler can fill 100 96-ounce bottles or 350 quart bottles a minute.

After bottles are case packed, they are conveyed to the palletizer, wrapped in plastic and trucked to a warehouse.

HP Hood's R&D center developed Almond Breeze for the Blue Diamond cooperative. Hood specializes in manufacturing for licensed, private label and co-packing accounts.

Mike Hardy is showing me an aseptic filler. “There are only two speeds to this — 0 and 600 bottles a minute,” he says. I watch a blur of bottles enter one end of the machine from an overhead conveyor, whirl from carousel to carousel and exit the other end. In a matter of seconds, the bottles have been sterilized, filled and capped.

Hardy is the director of operations of HP Hood’s Sacramento, Calif., dairy plant. Hood finished installing the aseptic filler in 2012. The facility processes ultra-high-temperature (UHT) dairy and nondairy beverages (including milk, cream and almond milk) in extended shelf life packages and aseptic packages.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, high-temperature short-time pasteurization “is important to the dairy industry because of the operating efficiencies that it affords. Properly operated, these units allow a high volume of production in a minimum of processing space.”

UHT processing heats raw milk to 280 degrees F (and higher) for two seconds. (The milk doesn’t boil because it is heated in a vacuum.) Manufacturing ESL and aseptic beverages gives processors distinct advantages. For one, the processing plant does not have to be located near population centers. It can be close to the milk source. For another, the longer shelf life extends the territory that a processor can service. ESL products stay fresh from 60 to 120 days (two to four times longer than conventionally processed milk) before reaching their expiration date. Aseptic packages have an even longer life — a year or more — and they don’t need to be refrigerated. That’s a boon for small retailers who lack cooling capabilities for back stock.

In the case of Hood, having ESL capabilities on the West Coast allows the East Coast-based dairy processor to better respond to the needs of national customers and to meet the growing demand for shelf-stable nondairy products like nutritional drinks, said Mike Newell, director of business development. Two other Hood plants (in Winchester, Va., and Oneida, N.Y.) also have aseptic packaging capabilities.