This article was published in the July 2024 issue of Pet Food Processing. Read it and other articles from this issue in our July digital edition.
When Alphia was formed on June 8, 2020, bringing together more than 70 years of industry experience from American Nutrition, C.J. Foods, Lortscher Animal Nutrition and Veracity Logistics, it was essential to come up with a name that helped portray the new company’s capabilities, mission and leadership. A new entity was being created and the name needed to reflect the direction the company was headed.
“Alphia is really born out of several different manufacturing companies that had similar philosophy — food safety first and super-premium manufacturing,” said Dave McLain, Alphia.
“Alphia is really born out of several different manufacturing companies that had similar philosophy — food safety first and super-premium manufacturing,” explained Dave McLain, founder, president and chief executive officer of Alphia.
The name Alphia was selected — bringing together the concept of the “alpha” dog, who leads the pack, and “via” meaning “by way of.” The new company chose the name Alphia to highlight its mission to shepherd the industry through leadership and growth, and showcase its philosophy of “it’s not what we do that makes us different, but how we do it.”
Alphia was the brainchild of McLain and former CEO of C.J. Foods, Tod Morgan. The two combined their years of industry experience with the full range of expertise stemming from the manufacturing companies they brought together to form Alphia — American Nutrition, C.J. Foods, Day Six Pet Nutrition, Lortscher Animal Nutrition and Veracity Logistics. Each company’s storied history contributed to Alphia’s new identity and purpose.
Jack Behnken started American Nutrition in Ogden, Utah, in 1972 with a mission to help retailers and brands develop market-leading pet foods, from concept to distribution. In 1989, the company expanded, adding a facility in Woodland, Wash., and then added another in Hazleton, Pa., in 2006. Jack’s son Bill later took over as president and CEO of the company.
Chuck and Joyce Kuenzi started C.J. Foods in 1986, originally to make a ready-to-eat breakfast cereal called Cornhusker All Stars. In 1991, upon Chuck’s death, his son John took over and started the company’s journey into the pet food industry, leading C.J. Foods to make dry kibble for more than 40 of the top US super-premium and ultra-premium brands. The company produced nearly a half billion pounds of extruded pet food and treats annually in its Pawnee City, Neb., and Bern, Kan., facilities. Additionally, the company acquired Day Six Pet Nutrition and its plant in Baxter Springs, Kan., in 2016.
From left: Dave McLain, founder, president and chief executive officer, and Brad Teasley, director of operations at the Ogden, Utah, facility, believe in Alphia’s mission to lead from the front.
|Lortscher Animal Nutrition, now known as LANI, contributes more than 60 years of pet food experience developing more than 800 ingredients. Its facility specializes in custom manufacturing large-scale flour blends and unique micro blends. And, Veracity Logistics provides transportation and distribution services, offering warehousing, a fulfillment center and cost-efficient transportation services.
“Alphia is all of those entities brought together,” McLain said. “As the super-premium pet food business grew from the 2000s on, we needed to be able to support national and international contract manufacturing, which means you can’t just have a regional manufacturing footprint, you need a national footprint. For private label, if you’re servicing a national retail network, you need a network of manufacturing that fits that.”
Today, Alphia provides its customers with a national network of processing facilities and distribution services from coast to coast. The company has plants that produce dry cat and dog food in Hazelton, Pa., Pawnee City, Neb., Bern, Kan., Baxter Springs, Kan., and Woodland, Wash., as well as a single-protein jerky treat plant in Hilmar, Calif. Its Ogden, Utah, manufacturing site features both dry cat and dog food production and dog treat capabilities.
“We took the best processes at each of the companies and incorporated those into our system. We had to integrate everything — process, systems, receiving, etc.,” McLain said. “What we did was make sure we had one standardized process throughout.”
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First and foremost
While most pet food processors take pet food safety seriously, McLain takes it personally. He looks back to the 2007 melamine crisis during which thousands of pounds of pet food were recalled after cats and dogs started dying of kidney failure. The culprit was later found to be wheat gluten from China that was adulterated with melamine and cyanuric acid, which were used to provide a higher protein content in the wheat gluten. The chemical combination proved to be deadly after crystals formed in pets’ kidneys later leading to kidney failure and death. Industry and consumer reports estimate close to 4,000 pets died as a result.
At one point during the crisis, while McLain was working for a different pet food company, he helped man the overflowing consumer hotlines, answering calls from distressed and frantic pet parents.
“I was on the phone with families hearing about the loss of their pets, it was heartbreaking,” he said. “There’s no reason that something like that should happen — there are plenty of scientific ways to protect pets.”
It was at that point that the importance of pet food safety hit home.
“At that time, I made a vow that I was never going to sacrifice anything for pet food safety,” he explained. “This heartbreaking experience profoundly impacted me and shaped Alphia’s focus on nourishing and protecting pets.
“Ensuring the safety and quality of our products is more than business; it’s our moral obligation to the families who trust us,” McLain added. “This dedication drives our stringent controls, significant investments in quality assurance, and steadfast promise to deliver pet health and safety.”
While Alphia doesn’t have its name on any pet food products on the shelves — it’s the largest non-branded manufacturer in the United States — the company’s reputation with its customers is paramount.
Alphia’s dedication to food safety can be seen throughout its processing operations, from plant sanitation to employee cleanliness awareness training and good manufacturing practices. The plants also conduct hold-and-release practices for all finished products, per Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) regulations. Product is held at the facility until all food safety and quality testing has been reviewed and completed. Once the plant’s food safety and quality assurance team has signed off on the quality results, the product can be released for shipping.
“We don’t take any short cuts, we don’t make any sacrifices. If it’s wrong, it’s just wrong and we get rid of it,” said Dave McLain, Alphia.
“One of the reasons we’ve grown so large is our customers know that if there’s one thing we are going to do, we’re going to do it right,” McLain explained. “We don’t take any short cuts; we don’t make any sacrifices. If it’s wrong, it’s just wrong and we get rid of it. It costs us money to do that, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Customer partnerships
With the proliferation of pet food and treat products on the market and a large number of startups trying to carve out their niche in this popular and growing industry, contract manufacturers like Alphia are always being approached to help grow new brands. However, startups aren’t typically Alphia’s partner of choice.
“There are so many new pet food brands out there — so many startups. But you need a certain level of scale to work with us,” McLain said. “However, sometimes when we see a customer that has the right understanding of the industry, the right backing, has spent money on consultants, researchers and formulators, and we see that they’re serious and maybe they have past experience in other industries, I might lean into those at lower minimum order quantities because they just might be the next major brand.”
As a national contract manufacturer, 60% of Alphia’s processing capacity is devoted to manufacturing pet food for large and small brands around the country. The remaining 40% goes toward the production of private-label dry dog and cat food for a number of retailers around the United States.
The treat side of the Ogden facility contains three, 300-foot-long ovens to bake the plant’s varieties of dog biscuits.
|“We like to partner with a customer long term and help them grow. There have been customers in our portfolio for over 20 years,” McLain said. “We’ve given customers double-digit growth by partnering with them…We are helping customers nurture their portfolios which helps them grow the top line — and in the end, we get the benefit of that.”
Alphia offers around 1,300 different dry kibble SKUs across its network of facilities and 40 baked treat SKUs from its Ogden plant. Alphia is happy to offer new and long-term customers products from its existing product portfolio, but also provides R&D services in all its facilities.
Seven of Ogden’s 260 employees work in R&D, helping customers with innovation, line extensions, formulation changes and incorporating new ingredients.
“Some people invest heavily in research and innovation ideas, and they come to us with a plan and expectations,” McLain said. “They say, ‘We want something like this,’ and we have to explain to them why they shouldn’t use certain ingredients. Some ingredients are incredibly expensive on a per-pound basis and customers can price themselves out of the market with the wrong ingredients. We tell them we can tweak the formula based on what they’re trying to drive toward and what consumer they’re trying to target.
“And then there are customers that come to us and say, ‘We’re stagnate, and we don’t know why,’” he added. “We start asking questions — ‘What channels are you in? Who’s your consumer? What’s happening to those consumers?’ Then we’ll flesh some ideas to do line extensions or potentially kill some SKUs that aren’t helping their bottom line. We offer customers more than just our production capacity.”
At Alphia, innovation not only happens in the R&D lab — the company also invests heavily in its engineering and fabrication capabilities on the production side.
“We have one of the largest engineering and fabrication teams in the industry,” said Brad Teasley, Alphia.
“We have one of the largest engineering and fabrication teams in the industry,” said Brad Teasley, director of operations at the Ogden plant. “We have 26 people who can design and build equipment specifically for Alphia. They’re not building extruders or conveyors, but something that will help streamline our processes.”
Ogden offerings
Alphia’s 487,000-square-foot Ogden facility, which dates back to 1984, is the only one in the network that produces both dry pet food and treats — 16 million lbs of dry kibble and 4 million lbs of baked dog treats are processed monthly.
The Ogden two-in-one plant features separate processing and cooking areas for kibble and treat products and a shared 40,000-square-foot packaging area.
On the almost 35,000-square-foot treat side, the plant’s capabilities include making more than 20 different shapes and sizes of treats, as well as the capability for custom treat shapes and sizes upon customer request. Offerings also include a wide range of styles and sizes of treat packages.
Recipe capabilities span meat inclusions, grain-free and grain-inclusive varieties, which are mixed and formed into treat shapes before being baked in one of the plant’s three, 300-foot-long ovens. After baking for 8 to 17 minutes, depending on the size and shape, the biscuits are then dried for 28 to 58 minutes, again depending on size, shape and recipe. Different ingredients or inclusions, such as texturized vegetable protein, can affect the baking and drying times.
Temperature and humidity in the facility can also affect cooking and drying times. Each plant has its own run profile to accommodate for conditions.
Biscuit packaging includes stand-up, resealable pouches as well as larger bulk boxes. Pick-and-place robots assist employees in some product loading processes in order to increase efficiency and consistency. All products pass through metal detection before packaging — one of the many quality assurance processes in place.
Pick-and-place robots assist with packing bulk dog biscuits to ensure proper handling and to protect the product from breakage.
| Photo by Jillian Meyer PhotographyThe 192 million lbs of dry cat and dog food produced annually at Alphia’s Ogden plant is mixed, extruded, dried and coated in the 21,425-square-foot extrusion side of the facility. The kibble varieties, many with fruit, vegetable and freeze-dried inclusions, are manufactured into various shapes, sizes and colors to meet customer specifications. Many are classified as super-premium diets, which include meat-first formulas and specialty ingredients.
The bulk of the kibble is made from flour, chicken meal, oats, barley and salmon meal which make up the premix. These bulk ingredients are received at the plant and stored in silos. Micro-dosed specialty ingredients including dough inhibitors, vitamins and minerals are stored in smaller quantities and are added per recipe specifications. Ingredients are transferred from the silos to a mix bin where they are blended according to the customer’s recipe.
The mixed ingredients are then fed into one of three extruders, where they are cooked and shaped into kibble. The kibble then undergoes a drying process to remove excess moisture.
The dried kibble, after being coated with additional nutrients and flavors to enhance its palatability and nutritional value, is transferred to the finished product bins for temporary storage.
Quality assurance (QA) testing is performed throughout the production process — during the intake processing of raw ingredients; during the kibble or treat production process; before the kibble is transferred to the finished product bins; before the packaging process; and during the finished product packaging process.
After QA testing, the kibble is packaged into its appropriate packaging container — in sizes up to 50-lb bags. After which, the product is food safety and quality tested an additional time before being released and shipped to customers.
Team commitment
Alphia employs 1,109 people across its US network, with 260 working in Ogden. Some Ogden employees are legacy team members from the company’s original 1984 American Nutrition plant.
“Our culture involves leading through action, leading through doing things differently — and that involves our commitment to food safety,” McLain said.
Stand-up pouches of baked snacks are filled, sealed and sorted into boxes for shipping.
| Photo by Jillian Meyer PhotographyTeasley added, “This philosophy aligned for me personally. I was in the military before, and we always say, ‘leaders lead from the front,’ and that’s what we try to do here. I’ve always had the mindset that you never ask someone to do something that you won’t do, don’t know how to do or aren’t willing to learn how to do — so that’s the way I approach what I do here, too. And that aligns with the way we do things as a company.”
Alphia’s leadership focus, both internally and throughout the industry, has helped build company morale, improve in-plant safety and create corporate unity. In-plant safety incidents have gone down since 2020, as well as voluntary employee turnover.
“I think both of those speak to how the company is taking care of its people,” Teasley said.
Recent employee programs include lunches and special events — including Alphia’s corporate birthday party in June. In addition, McLain holds an annual Town Hall, there is Employee of the Month recognition, and employees enjoy a company newsletter highlighting their milestones and accomplishments. Alphia also tries to be involved in the communities in which its plants reside.
“I take a lot of pride in what we do. I think what we do is a very noble profession, and we try to impart that on everyone who works for us,” McLain said. “We’re taking care of those most important family members — our pets.”
Alphia is positioned to reach more than $1 billion in sales in 2024, and anticipates further expansion and growth over the next five years.
“Our food safety philosophy has been the catalyst for our continued growth,” McLain said. “I think a lot of people think all companies are the same when it comes to food safety, but they’re impressed when they learn the industry isn’t the same across the board in terms of food safety.”
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