WASTE

NOT,
WANT
NOT

34 FOOD ENGINEERING foodengineeringmag.com December 2018

 Hispanic Cheese Makers’ wastewater lagoons are a big project,
but a small part of the company’s overall sustainability goal
BY CASEY LAUGHMAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

When you drive into Kent, Ill., THE OLD WAY company uses and how many days’
you see a sign that says “Welcome to The plant opened in 2009, when the worth of water that regulations require
Kent. People: 79. Dogs: 48.” company bought the 75,000-sq.-ft. facto- it to have capacity for, the numbers look
It may not still be entirely accurate, ry, which used to be a Saputo plant. The pretty grim pretty quickly.
although it’s probably not far off. plant has been brought up to SQF Level “They never had water quality issues
This tiny town in northern Illinois is 3 certification, and there are a number or anything like that for compliance;
a classic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dot of infrastructure improvements still on they just did not have enough capacity,
on the map, the kind of place that you the agenda. More on those later. and they’d be hauling off water in
don’t quite have to take dirt roads to
get to, but they’ll cut some time off
the drive.
But there’s something big going on in
HISPANIC CHEESE MAKERS BELIEVES IN A
Kent. Hispanic Cheese Makers (formerly
SUSTAINABILITY CULTURE AND IS TAKING
Nuestro Queso) has a factory here that
produces almost 9 million pounds of STEPS TO TRY TO INSTILL THAT CULTURE IN
cheese annually. Making that much
cheese means using a lot of water— EVERY ELEMENT OF OPERATIONS.
about 55,000 to 60,000 gallons per day,
to be precise—and all that water has to
go somewhere. What Hispanic Cheese As previously stated, the company tanker trucks all winter, because their
Makers is doing with that water and uses a lot of water, and that water has permit says they can’t spray on frozen
with its sustainability efforts overall been pumped for years into a waste- ground or snow-covered fields,” says
makes it a model for producers looking water lagoon with a capacity of about Derek Thompson, P.E., project engineer
for ways to be sustainable and good 2 million gallons. But when you start with Fehr Graham, the engineering firm
neighbors, and it’s why Hispanic Cheese to do the math on how much water the on the project.
Makers is being featured as a Fabulous
Food Plant.
It starts from the top down, as
CEO Mark Braun and the company’s
investment group believe in sustain-
ability as a core company mission. But
in this case, you can describe the actual
sustainability efforts as “top down,
across the road and being shared with
the local farmers.” And you can thank
environmental regulations for getting
P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F H I S PA N I C C H E E S E M A K E R S

the ball rolling.

Hispanic Cheese Makers (formerly

Nuestro Queso) has built two new
wastewater lagoons, with a total
capacity of more than 21 million
gallons. The water will be used to
irrigate surrounding farmlands, and
the project is the cornerstone of the
company’s sustainability efforts.

December 2018 FOOD ENGINEERING foodengineeringmag.com 35

 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
The regulation requiring 150 days’
worth of storage means that the mini-
mum capacity the company would need
would be in the ballpark of 9 million
gallons. Throw in room for rainwater,
and the number increases; throw in
some extra capacity for increased pro-
duction, and it goes up even more. With
those factors in play, the company was
looking at roughly 14 million gallons,
give or take, of needed capacity.
“We could have probably expanded
the system we had before and just kept
doing the same thing, or we could have
put in a different type of system and
just dumped water down into the river
system,” says Braun. “But we decided to
take a more thoughtful approach.”
That approach ended up providing
almost 22 million gallons of capacity. The
reasoning was that the company certain-
ly didn’t want to come up short on what it
needed, and the cost to build the lagoons
larger from the start was much less than
it would be to expand capacity later.
“In no sense is this an ROI project,”
says Braun, laughing.
But in a way, it is, even if it’s not nec-
essarily going to pencil out from a dol-
lars and cents standpoint. The commu-
nity and the factory are surrounded by
farmland; one of the reasons that such
a small town has a cheese factory is be-
cause of its proximity to dairy farms. In
36 FOOD ENGINEERING foodengineeringmag.com
Hispanic Cheese Makers produces a variety
of private-label cheeses in different
varieties, such as the crumbles seen
here. The company has invested heavily
in quality, safety and sustainability
efforts as part of its core values.
addition to that, corn and soybean fields
dominate the landscape.
Hispanic Cheese Makers believes in
being a good neighbor, so the wastewater
project is only partly driven by regulato-
ry and sustainability concerns. The com-
pany offers the wastewater as irrigation
water for farmers. Because the water
comes out rich in nitrogen and phospho-
rous, using it for irrigation means the
crops need less fertilizer. The company
invested in a GPS-driven, automated
irrigation boom and is actually paying
farmers to use the water for irrigation.
To recap: The wastewater is handled
in a way that doesn’t require treatment
with chemicals, doesn’t tax the local
water infrastructure, will be used to ir-
rigate farmland and cut down on the use
of fertilizer. Plus, a local farmer or two
get paid to have irrigation water provid-
ed to them. It may not be an ROI project
from a financial standpoint, but it’s hard
to argue with that set of outcomes.
Of course, for all of this to happen,
the project had to be designed and built
properly, and that’s where the engineers
come in.
START TO FINISH
Fehr Graham, with operations in Illi-
nois, Iowa and Wisconsin, has worked
with Hispanic Cheese Makers since the
processor’s beginning, so handling the
engineering work on the wastewater
project was a natural progression in the
working relationship. Hispanic Cheese
Makers didn’t want the bare minimum,
Thompson says.
“Sometimes project designs are
restricted to the lowest possible cost
or to bare minimums, but this was one
where Nuestro Queso wanted all the
environmental aspects considered each
step of the way, and I think it resulted
in a great facility for them and the sur-
rounding area,” he says.
The first step was finding a site for the
lagoons, preferably downslope from the
factory. Having to pump the water out
of the plant to a holding area would add
additional up-front expense, as well as the
ongoing expense of powering the pumps.
It would also require the use of force main
sanitary sewers to remove solids from
the water. In addition, if something in the
pumping process failed, there was the risk
of wastewater backing up into the plant.
The answer was literally a stone’s
throw away, across the road and down
a small slope. The plant already had
wastewater infrastructure going under
the road to lead to the existing lagoons,
so coming to an agreement for the new
site meant that the new piping simply
had to be branched off of the existing
pipe. The slope is enough that the water
flows out from the plant and through
the pipes into a tank where solids settle
out of the water. The water then flows
into the first lagoon, before eventu-
ally moving into the second smaller
lagoon as the first one fills up. The only
pumping involved comes at the end
of the process, when water is pumped
out of the second lagoon to irrigate
surrounding fields. Instead of multiple
pump stations along the way to get the
water to its destination, there is just one
at the end of the line to bring the water
from the lagoons to the boom irrigator.
If there’s a power outage or some sort
of equipment failure at that location, it
December 2018
 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
just means that water can’t be pumped
out of the lagoon, which is a far better
outcome than wastewater backing up
into the plant.
SUSTAINABILITY CULTURE
The wastewater project is the major
focus for Hispanic Cheese Makers’ sus-
tainability efforts right now, but it’s not
the only one. The company believes in a
sustainability culture, says Braun, and it’s
taking several steps to try to instill that
culture in every element of operations.
There are the smaller things, such as
increasing recycling, relamping the fa-
cility based on power company recom-
mendations and installing high-speed
doors on cold storage areas. Larger
capital investments, such as new boil-
ers, also are on the agenda. A number
of investments have already been made
in the production area, which uses effi-
cient machinery and a control system
that helps ensure that those machines
deliver on efficiency promises.
“It’s part of this holistic strategy of:
how are we handling waste, our recy-
cling, how are we acquiring energy, all
of that,” says Braun.
As part of that strategy, the com-
pany didn’t just re-evaluate at how it
handles water going out of the plant.
38 FOOD ENGINEERING foodengineeringmag.com
It’s also taking a hard look at the water
coming into the plant and how it is
acquired and treated before it can be
used. The water in the area is hard,
meaning that it has a high mineral con-
tent, including chlorides. Right now,
the plant has giant water softeners to
treat the incoming water but is evalu-
ating better solutions.
The challenge—as most processors
well know—is that in some industries,
water is water in a production facility.
You bring it in, you use it and reuse it in
Hispanic Cheese Makers does its
grinding and shredding on site. Ground
cheese can be packaged in bags or
other containers such as jars, then
packaged as private-label products.
certain applications, and then you get
rid of it. But food production requires
not only the right amount of water, but
also the right type for different applica-
tions, which makes properly managing
water exponentially more challenging.
“We need one type of water to run
our boiler systems, to run those more
efficiently,” says Braun. “We need
different kinds of water for drinking
water. We need different kinds of
water for cleaning. So you know, now
we’re adding new storage tanks. We’re
adding new capacity; we’re adding
measuring flows into each one of these
different areas, so we can understand
what those uses are and how they’re
being treated. We’re spending an
enormous amount of money, but we’re
putting in our own systems.”
QUALITY AND SAFETY
The company’s sustainability efforts
are far-reaching and part of the overall
mission to be a careful steward of
its environmental impacts. But the
company also has to be able to meet its
production goals and safety standards,
because sustainability doesn’t help
keep the doors open if you fail to deliver
the promised product.
The company produces cheese under
its own name and for a number of
private labels. (How many labels? Braun
points out that at one point, a compa-
ny was interested in buying cheese as
long as the buyer felt it was as good as
another brand. The other brand was
actually a Hispanic Cheese Makers
product as well.)
It also produces those cheeses in
multiple varieties, including shredded,
crumbled, rounds, wedges, wheels,
squares and cheese sticks (or string
cheese), among others. Shredding and
grating are done on site, and an in-
house lab handles safety and quali-
ty-control testing.
Being an SQF Level 3 plant means
that food safety and quality are para-
mount, and the company has invested
in equipment, training and testing to
ensure that those goals are met. Ev-
erything is given careful consideration
to ensure alignment with what the
company wants to achieve from safety,
quality and environmental standpoints.
“We don’t have any of those toxic
‘food-grade’ oils in a gearbox,” says
Braun. “The cleaning supplies or the
chemicals, all of that, everything is
about compliance, and some of them
are even organic.”
New refrigerated milk and whey
silos help ensure that the raw milk and
separated whey stay at safe tempera-
tures. Milk management is an area that
the company devotes a lot of time and
December 2018
 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
resources to, because milk can only sit
so long after it’s delivered in tankers.
Properly scheduling deliveries and using
the milk as soon as possible help ensure
that there’s no waste or safety concerns.
Milk is sourced from local farms, and the
company only uses rBST-free milk from
farms that meet its standards for milk
quality and treatment of animals.
The cheese is cooked in large
closed-vat systems, with automat-
ed salting and ingredient blending
systems. The system includes batch
tanks, shear pumps and heating and
melting systems, as well as produc-
tion batch cooling.
After the cheese is cooked, it is
conveyed through the facility to the
proper production areas. Shredding and
grinding are automated, while other
products, including string cheese, are
cut by hand. Long cheese ropes are de-
livered to a cutting table, where work-
ers slice them into appropriate lengths.
The sticks are then wrapped into balls
before later being packaged in shrink-
wrap. Leftover pieces are reformed into
new cheese ropes.
40 FOOD ENGINEERING foodengineeringmag.com
The cheese is blast cooled, and
the new high-speed doors cut down
on wasted energy from warmer air
entering the coolers when doors are
opened.
The company handles packaging
and co-packing on site. A number of
In Hispanic Cheese Makers’ SQF Level
3-certified plant, worker safety, food
safety and quality are paramount. All
three are addressed at every step of
the production process to ensure that
the company’s product is made in a
safe, high-quality way.
the products, such as the balls of string
cheese, are sealed in shrink-wrap, Cryo-
vac or Multivac packaging. The compa-
ny can also produce cheese in contain-
ers such as bags, cups or buckets.
THE BOTTOM LINES
All of these efforts—sustainability,
quality, safety—cost money, and the
company isn’t a huge operation. Its
revenue is measured in tens of millions
instead of hundreds of millions or
billions. But safety and quality can’t be
sacrificed, which means that sustain-
ability would be the natural choice to
fall by the wayside.
That isn’t to say that sustainability
has to be a back-breaking cost, because
it doesn’t. But there’s a difference
between taking advantage of the
low-hanging fruit, such as more effi-
cient lighting or energy-saving equip-
ment, and making a major investment
in a project to build massive wastewa-
ter lagoons that provide irrigation for
local farmers.
This type of decision often comes
down to prioritization, and for Hispanic
Cheese Makers, that choice starts at the
top. Being a relatively small company
means that Braun and the company’s
investment group can be involved
with decisions at every level, and their
commitment to a sustainable operation
means that projects can be approved
even if they don’t necessarily pencil out
the right way. The project is a selling
point for potential customers who are
interested in whether the cheese is being
produced sustainably, but more than
that, it’s a point of pride for the company.
Braun points out that you don’t
see a lot of companies of similar size
investing so heavily in sustainability
products, and the company describes
its sustainability value as this: “Our
responsibility is to co-create a world
where each of us, our communities and
our planet can flourish.”
The wastewater lagoons are the
company’s big-ticket project right
now, and they’re an important part of
meeting the sustainability goal that
the company publicly puts forward. But
they’re part of a larger strategy, and the
company’s willingness to embrace what
is possible instead of what is simply
cost-efficient leads to one project being
the catalyst for others, says Braun.
“So the project, it starts out as one
thing, right? We tried to solve one thing,”
he says. “And then sometimes you take a
step back and reassess and redevelop all
the things that you’re doing.”
For more information:
Hispanic Cheese Makers (formerly Nuestro Queso),
www.hcmakers.com
Fehr Graham, www.fehr-graham.com
December 2018