FCI Ships First Orders from New Production Facility

03 May 2017 --- First Choice Ingredients (FCI), one of the largest dairy ingredient companies in the United States, recently shipped its first orders from their new, full-scale production facility, confirming the market’s growing demand for high quality dairy concentrates. 

Purchased in late 2016, FCI spent the last several months testing, calibrating and updating the facility to ensure it was ready for full-scale production. The new plant has doubled FCI’s footprint and has the capacity to produce over 10 million pounds of dairy ingredients annually.

“Getting the third facility up to our standards was an enormous undertaking,” said Jim Pekar, president of FCI. “But we know that our ability to speed up production timelines with this extra capacity will be a huge win for our customers.” 

Pekar told FoodIngredientsFirst: “While our business as a whole is growing exponentially, the biggest opportunities for First Choice Ingredients today reside in the clean label and organic markets. Customers want labels with ingredients they can relate to, like milk, cream and cheese. Our natural products fit the bill perfectly, especially in the organic arena, where we can provide project-verified materials all the way back to the farms producing the milk. Our customers love that we are able to offer verification and consistency.”

“Our third full-scale production facility provides us with a lot of options for growth. Initially, we will produce our most popular concentrates here including our cheddar cheese varieties, cream profiles and natural butters. We will also produce many of our Kosher and Halal versions here. As had been our strategy since we opened in 1994, the market will dictate how rapidly we expand our offerings at this facility.”

With all licenses and certifications now completed, FCI recently celebrated their expansion with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Menomonee Falls facility with a variety of city and county officials.

The 83,000 sq. ft. manufacturing space is Kosher and Halal certified.

by Elizabeth Green