PET Food Processing - December 2018 - 18

PLANT PROFILE

or style of treat the company can sustain; is something
employees can do repeatedly at a success rate that meets
the customers' expectations; and its cost implications are
favorable to both Hampshire and its customer.
One project that may not have met all of those criteria
is a good example, however, of how flexible, innovative
and responsive the Hampshire team can be. To celebrate
Hampshire's 10th anniversary, the company successfully
established a mark recognized by the Guinness World
Records for the largest dog biscuit. The company's
winning entry weighed an impressive 617 lbs., beating
the previous record by nearly 400 lbs.
This accomplishment came just two months after the
south wall of Hampshire's processing facility was blown
out in the Joplin tornado in May of 2011. In the week
following that disaster, Hampshire employees mobilized to first help the four Hampshire families who lost
everything in the storm and then to ship - without
electricity, using flashlights and hand-written bills of
lading - 19 truckloads of products to customers. A
mere eight weeks after the Hampshire facility was damaged, the company opened the processing plant to the
public for the world record attempt.
Hampshire's three
baked treat lines
include rotary
moulders and one
205-ft. and two
180-ft. Baker
Perkins ovens.

Flexible and fast
World records aside, an important aspect of the company's strategy to select projects that work well with
the co-manufacturer's capabilities is to be proactive and
propose new product ideas and formats to customers, rather than waiting for customers to initiate new

PET FOOD PROCESSING | December 2018 | www.petfoodprocessing.net

product development. This focus on R&D is how the
company, in partnership with its customers, averages
as many as 60 new product launches per year. Todd
Dunlop, director of research development and quality
assurance, says one reason Hampshire can get so many
products to market in a single year is because the company's decision-making team is small and agile.
Pet Food Processing sat down with the six-person
management team to learn more about the company and its manufacturing process. At the table were
Larson, Dunlop, Bob Weaver, chief financial officer,
Curt Dudley, vice president of sales, Stormy Ray, human
resources manager, and Derek Hill, plant manager.
"Our size makes us more flexible and quicker to market," Dunlop says. "Everyone we need on board for a
new product concept is sitting in this room, these six
people." From product brief, to executables, to nutritional profile, formulation, samples, packaging and
marketability analysis, Hampshire can get a product to
market in 12 to 16 weeks.
Another secret weapon in product development is the
company's test facility. "We now have our own internal
R&D test kitchen, so we can test new products in house
with the customer's help or without the customer's help,"
Dudley says. "Todd and his team can do small batch test
runs for test feedings, analyticals, whatever they need to
evaluate. With the test kitchen, we can get to a finished
product much more quickly."
Prior to having an in-house R&D facility, the smallest
test-batch size Hampshire was able to run was around

http://www.petfoodprocessing.net

PET Food Processing - December 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of PET Food Processing - December 2018