Gary Huddleston, AFIA's director of feed manufacturing and regulatory affairs, presented the facility's leadership with the award today during the AFIA's Feed Education Program, happening in Atlanta in conjunction with the International Production & Processing Expo.
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| Kent Nutrition Group's (KNG) Mason (Mich.) Plant wins AFIA's 2021 Commercial Dry Feed Facility of the Year award. From left: Mike Gauss, president; Duke Tanguy, central region director of operations; and Jason Lents, senior director of operations. Image credit: AFIA |
'Kent Nutrition Group's Mason Plant prides itself not only on excellent customer service, but also in delivering 19,000 tons of high-quality feed for several livestock species throughout the Midwest,' Huddleston said. 'With low staff turnover and great teamwork, this facility has made improvements that have led to greater production efficiency and safety of its products.'
Kent Nutrition Group is a division of Kent Corporation, a family-owned, American company with a history of innovation in animal nutrition; food, beverage and personal care ingredients; agriculture; and pet care. Kent Nutrition Group manufactures high-quality nutrition products for everything from livestock to small animals.
As part of a recent initiative to improve production efficiency and ensure product safety, in 2018, the company upgraded its mixing system from the Aceco system, which had been in operation since 1989, to the new, extremely precise Repete Mixing System. This system has allowed the plant to streamline its mixing process and put in place safeguards to reduce opportunities for human error, such as proceeding with a manufacturing run if the sequencing and flushing procedures are not properly followed. Now, Kent Nutrition Group can stack runs seamlessly and has extensive lot tracking and traceability capabilities, allowing each ingredient to be traced back to the original supplier's lot code, a valuable tool in everyday operations.
'With less downtime between runs, our team gets more production out of our workday,' says Dave Earl, the Mason plant manager. 'We are able to produce our quality Kent products more effectively and efficiently, creating near perfect products every time, on time. Being named the AFIA 2021 Commercial Dry Feed Facility of the Year award winner is a great honour and recognition of our team's efforts to continually improve.'
The AFIA has been recognising excellent feed manufacturing facilities through the Feed Facility of the Year program since 1985, with 2021 marking the first year that the association began issuing top industry awards to facilities in four categories: commercial dry, liquid feed, premix and ingredient, and integrator.
For more information visit the AFIA website, HERE.
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