While starting as a residential builder in Clear Lake, Iowa, sixty years ago, Dean Snyder Construction has grown to include several core markets including commercial, food and beverage processing, industrial and pharmaceutical, and healthcare. As part of our 60-year celebration, we’ll focus in on our food industrial experience this month.In 1986, DSC started working with Kraft Foods in Mason City, Iowa. Thirty-two years later, we’re still there. It was during this time, DSC expanded to work in food and beverage plants throughout the United States and even into Canada.
Ever-changing regulations in the food industry are prompting the need for more modern and efficient food processing facilities. Requests for organic, non-GMO, and natural ingredients are also changing the way the food and beverage industry produce new products.
For example, DSC helped Barilla install a gluten-free product line in Ames, Iowa; we installed the lines to reduce artificial flavors and colors in Kraft’s Philadelphia Cream Cheese in Lowville, New York; we expanded Harvest Innovations to include two non-soy process lines into their production facility in Indianola, Iowa, and we helped expand the world’s largest organic oat processor at Grain Millers in St. Ansgar, Iowa.
Other notable projects through the last 32 years include a $150 million expansion and renovation to Kraft Heinz Oscar Mayer in Kirksville, Missouri, a $100 million design-build remodel on a Velveeta cheese facility in New Ulm, Minnesota, several modifications and revisions with Nestlè in Waverly, Iowa, and a contract with Nellson Nutraceutical in Quebec, Canada, for our first international job.
With our experience in these projects, DSC has become a single-source solution for design and building renovations, distribution centers, and warehouses of all sizes. We have adapted to schedules, performed fast-track projects, and become experts in understanding Good Manufacturing Practices (or GMP) standards. Safety in the food and beverage processing facilities is of utmost importance. Facility planning and design for the operational requirements needed to produce food safely for consumers is a crucial part of the construction process. Without the correct layout and equipment arrangement, facilities can lose precious time and money in their processing.
It was also with these jobs DSC was recognized as a top 400 contractor in the nation in 2017. Not bad for a company that started with a residential builder working out of his pickup sixty years ago.