These Food Plants are Fabulous for Very Different Reasons

This article originally appeared on FoodEngineringMag.com. 

 Conagra Brands opened the doors to its 250,000-sq.-ft. fresh pack vegetable facility for peas, corn and rice in September of last year. The Waseca, Minnesota, plant replaced a 92-year-old facility that suffered from an, “aging infrastructure that presented challenges to process frozen peas and corn from the regional and local fields in a safe and efficient manner,” according to the company. The new greenfield facility was designed to serve the company’s Birds Eye brand to meet increasingly stringent food safety requirements as the FDA pushes the industry toward more ready-to-eat (RTE) frozen vegetables. But while many manufacturers are also dealing with the challenge of increased food safety requirements, completing a fresh pack processing facility adds the increased difficulty of a complex schedule. Once seeds go in the ground and the commissioning schedule is set, there’s no other choice but to get the facility up and running on time. Failure to do so would mean a lost season.