“We’re doing more in this facility than we could have possibly done in a portion of our old plant,” Tom Dietrich says.

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Until five years ago, Tom Dietrich’s business was milk and specialty drying at Dietrich’s Milk Products (DMP). In 1998, his company formed a partnership with two dairy co-ops, and the primary focus of DMP shifted to drying milk that otherwise “didn’t have a home,” he says. In the company’s down time while drying milk, it would spray-dry other products for customers.

“Our specialty customers didn’t want to call us and hear us say, ‘We’re sorry, we can’t do that product for you because we have too much milk,’” he states. “So that’s why we formed this new company. We were strongly encouraged by a number of our specialty customers to set up a new company to the extent that some of those customers expressed an interest in investing because they needed this unique service.”

Since 2007, Dietrich’s Specialty Processing has been focusing on spray drying food products for some of the food industry’s largest companies to some of the smallest. “It’s all custom processing,” Dietrich says. “We don’t have any of our own products. We do products like simple sweeteners to complicated products like infant formula, which is a finished product that has all the vitamins and mineral pre-mixes added. Most of what we do is just an ingredient that ends up in someone else’s product.”

In addition to formulas and sweeteners, the company often dries beverage powders, bakery blends, natural or artificial flavors and some specialty dairy powders. Dietrich explains that the company receives the ingredients either in liquid or dry form, and Dietrich’s then mixes them with water to create a slurry that is typically 40 to 70 percent water. The slurry is then injected under pressure into a hot-air stream that drives off moisture to create powder.

Using dry powder ingredients has benefits over liquid, Dietrich says. “Dry products have a much longer shelf life than liquid, and they’re economical to buy and use,” he explains. “Liquid flavors, for instance, are highly concentrated, and if you’re slightly off on the addition of a liquid, you could completely destroy the product. The difference could be 10 drops of flavor liquid as opposed to 10 pounds of powder flavor.”

Dietrich’s 26,000-square-foot Pennsylvania plant includes two tower spray dryers to handle customer needs. The company’s biggest clients can require up to 20 percent of the spray-drying capacity, but Dietrich explains that the time required to spray dry depends on the product being dried. “The dryers are designed to evaporate water, and the two dryers can do 2,500 pounds of water hourly between the two of them,” he says. “Our larger dryer, which is a 1,500-pound dryer, can run products as slow as 400 pounds an hour up to 1,250 pounds per hour. Some runs are 5,000 pounds and smaller and some are up to 100,000 pounds.”

Successful Specialty
Although the economy is still struggling, Dietrich says Dietrich’s Specialty is staying busy, thanks to its niche service and experienced leadership team. “We have a small operating team that’s highly motivated and very capable,” he states. “The core people came from our old company, and all have been doing specialty spray drying since 1990.”

“Dietrich’s leadership team of [Tom] Dietrich, Director of Operations Jeff James, Director of Quality and Research Janet Thumm, and our production supervisory staff have more than 100 years of combined experience in spray-dried food products,” the company says.

The company’s facility also is a big key to its success. In 2006, Dietrich’s Specialty moved to a former warehouse that didn’t have utilities or water and had never processed any food. The interior of the existing building was modified, wet processing areas were created and Dietrich’s built a 5,000-square-foot addition to house the spray dryers.

“We’re doing more in this facility than we could have possibly done in a portion of our old plant, which was three times the size of this plant with more than three times the people,” Dietrich says. “We are automated to the point that other companies would only dream they could be automated. The automation has wireless features that allow for portability of the controls and monitoring capabilities within the facility, and it allows for Internet access for remote monitoring and troubleshooting.”

Dietrich’s also is seeing healthy activity during the recession as consumers cut down on eating out. “One of the nice things with food is that people will continue to eat,” Dietrich says. “What we saw when the shock hit the economy was that a lot of our customers saw an increase in demand because people were not eating out but purchasing frozen meals and eating them at home.”

Kosher Operation
Dietrich’s Specialty operates on a three-shift, five- to six-day work week, processing kosher pareve, kosher dairy and non-kosher products. Examples of parve products the company processes are vitamins, soy and wheat protein, and flavor extracts. Its kosher dairy products include dairy powders and some dairy flavors, while its non-kosher products are primarily meat flavors.

“After processing anything that requires a re-koshering of the equipment, a 24-hour ‘fallow’ period must be completed before the rabbi has to come in and run a hot-water ‘koshering’ wash,” the company says. In the event that a rabbi can’t be present in the facility during the koshering process, Dietrich’s allows the rabbi to certify the process via the Internet.