HPP Tolling

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04/02/2025 Added

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HPP Tolling by Pat Ballard. 2025 High Pressure Processing and Dehydration Workshop

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[00:00:00.000]So I'm Pat Ballard and been with Universal Pure about a year as of April 1. Spent most of my career in the food world, starting off with Cisco, selling to restaurants, beating the street when I was a young lad back in the early days, jumping in dumpsters, all that kind of stuff, looking at what products are being sold.
[00:00:28.580]And then spent some time at Starbucks, a couple different corporate roles there, and CNS Wholesale, for those of you who know the grocery wholesale world, and recently spent time in the refrigerated cold storage world with AmeriCold.
[00:00:43.500]And been here for a year and really like what we're doing. I think there's a piece to the business that's much greater than just what we do individually.
[00:00:57.160]The market's ripe for us to all kind of band together and be the ambassadors and shine a light on HPP and what it can offer, especially when you talk about food safety and the consumer, and looking forward to being part of that as we move forward.
[00:01:15.180]So with that, I'll get rolling into my little deck here. I thought I'd start off with probably sitting there saying who the heck is Universal Pure?
[00:01:24.180]So we are the HPP partner of choice.
[00:01:27.160]And market leading provider of mission critical food safety and technical services.
[00:01:32.160]And we do that in the cold chain environment, and in food, beverage, and nutritional.
[00:01:38.180]And that's kind of our day in, day out.
[00:01:41.180]You know, when we look at the next slide I'll share, but it talks about why customers come to us.
[00:01:47.180]We'll see that, but that's who we are in a nutshell.
[00:01:51.180]Our mission kind of goes with what I mentioned just a little bit ago.
[00:01:57.160]It's to help create a safer, higher quality food system.
[00:02:01.160]I got a slide coming up.
[00:02:03.160]We've seen a lot of bad stuff throughout 2024 in regards to food safety, which, you know, we need to, you know, from our company's perspective, the DNA of our company, which is a little over 900 strong across the United States.
[00:02:19.160]We wake up to do just that, you know, create a higher, you know, safer food system.
[00:02:27.160]We're a domestic company right now, North America, just in the U.S.
[00:02:31.160]But our vision is to become the global leading provider of clean food safety and technical solutions.
[00:02:38.160]All right, it's not going to happen overnight.
[00:02:40.160]We've got a lot of opportunity, a lot of work to do here in the States, and looking forward to doing just that.
[00:02:45.160]At some point, I think there's a lot of global application.
[00:02:50.160]Some countries are doing HPP today, perfectly fine, but I think in the future,
[00:02:57.160]we're going to have to really expand our capabilities and expand our ability to shine the light on the world
[00:03:04.160]when it comes to what HPP has to offer.
[00:03:07.160]Why customers choose Universal Pure?
[00:03:11.160]I'll start with the map.
[00:03:14.160]I think this is, as the leader in North America and the U.S., this is really important for a lot of customers.
[00:03:21.160]We've got coast to coast, California, Texas, Nebraska.
[00:03:27.160]We're close to where we are, Ohio, down in Georgia, right outside Atlanta, and then Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
[00:03:35.160]So we really do have the ability to, from a supply chain perspective, help our customers get from point A to point B.
[00:03:42.160]And then when we use HPP, we extend the shelf life, and we can get new customers' products into different marketplaces, which is pretty cool.
[00:03:52.160]We've been around for a long time, not 100 years.
[00:03:57.160]We've been around since 2001 as a cold storage facility here in Nebraska, and then we've expanded over time.
[00:04:04.160]We got into HPP with the help of the gentleman who just sat down, Mr. Jeff Barnard, into HPP, and we've been doing it for 15 years.
[00:04:12.160]So with that, we've developed a lot of nice value-added services on the upstream side of HPP and then on the downstream side of HPP.
[00:04:21.160]And that's been pretty valuable, so we've become a one-stop-shop type of service for our customers.
[00:04:27.160]The piece in the middle talks about the national reach.
[00:04:30.160]So some of the comments we get from customers, having that national reach is important.
[00:04:35.160]The one-stop shop, the reliability, we do what we do pretty darn well.
[00:04:41.160]Learned a lot over the 15 years on the HPP front.
[00:04:45.160]Done the cold storage piece and all the value-added services that go with that we do really well.
[00:04:51.160]A lot of the value-added services that we do are not fun to do.
[00:04:54.160]They're hard to do, a lot of intricacies with them.
[00:04:57.160]But that's cool because that makes it sticky to us and the customer, and that's what we want.
[00:05:03.160]All right, so good reliability, good quality.
[00:05:07.160]We'll talk a second on the food safety component of what we do.
[00:05:11.160]But we're very much into a quality service, quality experience.
[00:05:16.160]And then with customer satisfaction, I've been here a year, just been here 20-plus years.
[00:05:22.160]Really good on being flexible, really good on being there for the customer.
[00:05:27.160]And it's helped us grow over the years.
[00:05:30.160]This next slide, if you think of this as just one of our facilities, all under one roof,
[00:05:36.160]we've got a couple of different, when we think of a one-stop shop,
[00:05:40.160]a couple of different components that are important to kind of point out.
[00:05:43.160]So this first section, preparation and storage,
[00:05:46.160]down here we could be blending product for a customer in one part of the facility.
[00:05:51.160]We could be air tempering. We could be dry aging products.
[00:05:57.160]We could also be bottling. So we could be doing all those services.
[00:06:02.160]We look at the HPP piece. We then HPP the product.
[00:06:08.160]If we need to do, stick it into a cold storage, refrigerated section of the warehouse.
[00:06:14.160]We could kit. We could label. We could ink.
[00:06:17.160]We could do that type of service over here on the other side of the warehouse.
[00:06:21.160]And then ultimately, there's going to be a trailer bumping up to the back of the warehouse,
[00:06:25.160]and we're going to load it, and it's going to go out to market.
[00:06:27.160]So key is, what we try to do with our customers is get into conversations that
[00:06:32.160]product comes to us and doesn't go back to the customer for any additional services.
[00:06:37.160]Because right now, reality is transportation is the biggest expense.
[00:06:43.160]So we want to try to do as much as we can, let the product get to market,
[00:06:47.160]sell, and let the revenue flow back to the customer and keep the world going.
[00:06:53.160]And if you guys have questions, feel free to ask.
[00:06:57.160]Food safety focus, we've got 50-plus people on the food safety team.
[00:07:03.160]Christian's running around here somewhere,
[00:07:06.160]but Christian has built a really good food safety team.
[00:07:10.160]I would say no matter what size of customer,
[00:07:13.160]from the biggest of the big to the smaller customers,
[00:07:16.160]we act as a nice consultant to our customers to help guide them
[00:07:19.160]through the regulatory challenges that might be out there.
[00:07:23.160]But all in all, from the corporate perspective, we've got a lot of people
[00:07:27.160]that we've got a strong team, and then all the way down through the local
[00:07:30.160]facilities, we've got FSQA covered pretty tightly.
[00:07:33.160]And it's our job. We have customers sending us product in.
[00:07:37.160]It's our job to be trusted and to protect that brand while it's in our possession.
[00:07:43.160]So without the food safety focus, probably wouldn't be in business.
[00:07:48.160]So it's definitely ingrained in the DNA that we have.
[00:07:51.160]We're very tight when it comes to SQF, USDA, FDA, HACCP,
[00:07:57.160]USDA organic, Circle K, we're watching that.
[00:08:01.160]It's part of our world.
[00:08:04.160]All right, headlines here, unfortunately, we've probably all seen through 24.
[00:08:13.160]The header of the slide, "Create a Safe Food System," is mission critical.
[00:08:19.160]I think probably we'd all sit here and say, "Yeah, it is. It really is."
[00:08:23.160]2025, it would be nice not to see any headlines like that.
[00:08:27.160]Throughout the year.
[00:08:29.160]Unfortunately, we've got opportunities.
[00:08:33.160]I think the cool thing is that where we sit as a company and where all of us sit within the industry,
[00:08:40.160]we have the ability to impact that.
[00:08:42.160]I think that's the key goal that we should all have, especially coming through a conference like this.
[00:08:48.160]We all band together. We've all got different expertises, sit in different spots within the supply chain,
[00:08:53.160]and we make this stuff happen.
[00:08:57.160]As bad as this is, it offers us as a company and us as an industry some tailwinds to help work against.
[00:09:03.160]I think all of us, to some degree, are looking at labels like we probably never have before.
[00:09:10.160]We want truth about product ingredients on labels, so we're prioritizing our health.
[00:09:18.160]We're looking at ultra-processed products differently than we have before.
[00:09:23.160]Again, couple that with the prior slide.
[00:09:27.160]As an industry and as a company, some really nice tailwinds.
[00:09:31.160]Then you throw in the administration that we're currently in with RFK Jr. and his focus.
[00:09:38.160]I just saw an update today with grass and really pushing the pole grass,
[00:09:45.160]which was put in the government back in 1958, I believe, but generally regarded as safe ingredients.
[00:09:54.160]It's a whole different world right now with this administration.
[00:09:57.160]The nutritional information on the labels, everything is being looked at, and that helps us.
[00:10:04.160]That's what we've got in our toolkit, HPP.
[00:10:08.160]So pretty excited about what we're doing.
[00:10:13.160]Advantages that we saw a lot of yesterday with Daniela's presentation,
[00:10:19.160]but utilizing cold water, high pressure in an isostatic environment really is the key three things
[00:10:27.160]that kills salmonella, E. coli, listeria, and really protects us as a consumer.
[00:10:34.160]Key advantages, enhancing the food safety, retaining nutritional qualities, taste, texture, color.
[00:10:41.160]Saw some pretty good stuff with Gary's presentation on the impact potentially of HPP on meat,
[00:10:48.160]which we've got to just keep working as an industry together on.
[00:10:52.160]Clean label enablement extends shelf life.
[00:10:57.160]It protects company brands.
[00:10:59.160]Everybody in the room, we need everybody's brands protected.
[00:11:03.160]And then the allowing for additional distribution, market expanse.
[00:11:09.160]Take that, look at the application.
[00:11:11.480]across ready to eat ready to cook proteins premium beverages you know look
[00:11:16.930]at baby food dips and sauces ready to eat meals fresh pet food got a lot of
[00:11:23.950]applications and these are probably not all the applications you know there's
[00:11:27.070]there's total addressable market for HPP is is pretty vast and I think it's just
[00:11:32.650]a matter of time before we see additional applications being part of our
[00:11:38.050]world and then as the consumer trends kind of you know fold into all of this
[00:11:43.990]with our food safety consciousness you know you look at the clean label
[00:11:48.790]sustainability convenience we're a nation of a lot of individual meals
[00:11:55.210]being cooked and we can help with that quite a bit and then the way we take
[00:11:59.770]care of our pets now compared to the old days I mean it's just it's a whole
[00:12:03.970]different ballgame and that's what we see with the the pet food
[00:12:07.510]blast you know the growth that's just continuing to go up and up all key
[00:12:13.210]advantages that HPP can support so this is a you know peek behind the the cover
[00:12:22.870]a little bit so we get we have a lot of different customers small to big
[00:12:27.370]corporate global customers you know an HPP is kind of new and it's kind of
[00:12:32.350]unknown so they're coming to us with a lot of interesting strategic conversations
[00:12:36.970]so you know in a lot of the the big big customers that you know are interested
[00:12:43.010]in what HPP is all about we get into conversations about the capital
[00:12:46.870]investment you know that's part of HPP the operational complexities that are
[00:12:51.910]part of HPP the HPP and the food safety expertise that's needed the network and
[00:12:58.390]the service offering and in that component that's really you don't want
[00:13:03.730]to be in the HPP business with one machine every one of
[00:13:06.430]our geographic locations has multiple redundant machines because when they go
[00:13:11.310]down that's you know there's not like a part sitting necessarily if it's a frame
[00:13:15.790]or a vessel that gets needs to be updated or replaced that's five six
[00:13:22.090]seven hundred thousand dollar investment and it's not just going to be sitting on
[00:13:25.930]somebody's shelf at hyperbaric so you know it's a it's part of our
[00:13:30.130]conversation and then the core business focus which is where we really are
[00:13:34.710]trying to keep our customers focused
[00:13:35.890]on their core competencies so when we look at the capital investment you know
[00:13:42.430]we talk about the cost of the equipment not cheap all right not cheap they've
[00:13:46.550]got a you know there's a number of different sizes available in the market
[00:13:49.330]based on the profile of volume that customers are gonna run and the products
[00:13:53.290]that they're gonna run but bottom line even if you're looking to buy a used
[00:13:57.290]piece of equipment it's not cheap you know it's a capital investment you know
[00:14:01.210]corporate entities have to go through quite a bit of decision-making in
[00:14:05.350]business case building to you know determine if they want to try and show
[00:14:09.250]that type of money out the facility retrofit is probably not looked at as
[00:14:14.110]much as it should be but you know when you're looking at a production floor
[00:14:17.830]with cement of 18 inches that's not the norm 18 inch foundations are not the
[00:14:22.790]norm in warehouse production facility environments so 18 inch thickness of
[00:14:28.330]cement the the water availability these things use a lot of water so got to have
[00:14:34.810]the water availability got to have the drainage also power they suck down power
[00:14:41.230]you got to have the power availability so it's there's a lot that goes on and
[00:14:45.130]then if you're trying to do this type of retrofit in a current up and running food
[00:14:51.250]production manufacturing facility you know it's just disrupting to the
[00:14:55.970]environment and then you got to have the ancillary equipment to support the
[00:14:59.290]investment they just don't run on machine alone you got to have inventory
[00:15:04.270]parts all of that type of stuff so in our world we'll take all that that's
[00:15:09.910]that's our world so mr. customer you guys stay focused on what you do we'll
[00:15:15.010]take care of all this
[00:15:17.730]operational complexities capital time space investment there's a learning
[00:15:26.230]curve to HPP probably 18 to 24 months and then it's really kind of an ongoing
[00:15:30.550]because you're gonna have turnover unfortunately in the world
[00:15:33.730]so there's a constant learning curve you know the the expense associated the
[00:15:41.490]long-term being in the HPP business you can buy a new machine today well so at
[00:15:46.390]some point it's going to be five years old and it's going to be 10 years old
[00:15:48.970]it's gonna be 20 years old and the investment associated to HPP is there
[00:15:53.930]it's expensive the engineering expertise highly qualified folks working on new
[00:15:59.470]machines there yeah it's not I'm not going to be working on any of the
[00:16:03.190]HPP machines I am I'm not even I wouldn't consider myself a handyman at
[00:16:07.210]best with my wife and so it's it's these are six-figure types of maintenance
[00:16:12.790]people and it's it takes a lot to work on them average HPP machine at 12 hours
[00:16:18.910]a week is going on to some kind of preventative maintenance so really and
[00:16:23.410]that's where the redundancy comes into play speed and flexibility with us it's
[00:16:28.870]pretty turnkey all right but to try and integrate HPP
[00:16:32.650]on a high volume level into a production facility can be disrupting all right
[00:16:38.650]it's not easy to do so with us we prefer to just make the decision we can work
[00:16:43.750]through all the intricacies of bringing product to us and having it HPP and then
[00:16:48.930]probably the last one here is just the operational efficiency you got you know
[00:16:52.210]keep the customers you know focused on what they do and then leverage our
[00:16:57.010]experience leverage our expertise over the last 15 years of running high volume
[00:17:02.110]you know six six and a half day you know per week to machine per facility
[00:17:08.490]expertise all right and then really at the this right-hand side is all about
[00:17:14.230]the this the labor you know we can automate HPP if you got the right
[00:17:19.510]product mix and the right volumes you can do some automation but you got a lot
[00:17:26.370]of staff that's gonna inevitably be part of the equation you got operating
[00:17:31.290]maintenance
[00:17:31.570]spare parts you got to take care of and then you've got the HPP supervisors
[00:17:36.490]maintenance supervisors and then you got to have the food safety and quality
[00:17:40.130]component all right so none of this is inexpensive or for the faint of heart
[00:17:46.490]all right turnkey solution as I mentioned dedicated
[00:17:53.410]team I think we've got a nice opportunity with our customers large and
[00:17:57.490]small from a corporate level leadership perspective to talk strategically
[00:18:01.030]help custom help help our customers talk through HPP getting products to
[00:18:06.370]market talk about supply chain the cold chain and how we fit together we're
[00:18:12.730]working really tight right now with our OEMs you know hyperbaric you know to go
[00:18:18.930]because together like I said we're going to try to shine the light on HPP be the
[00:18:24.010]ambassadors for the industry be the ambassadors that show the consumer
[00:18:28.210]market what we can be doing
[00:18:30.490]ok be nice to be going to a retail refrigerator section and see a little
[00:18:34.930]logo on the package that said has been HPP you know whatever that logo is going
[00:18:40.090]to end up ultimately looking like but that's kind of where we're thinking we
[00:18:43.610]need to be food safety 50-plus quality assurance team members there's not a lot
[00:18:50.110]of folks out there that have 50 you know plus food safety folks on their teams
[00:18:54.830]hundred years of combined experience and FSQA
[00:18:59.950]50-plus years again on the experience side just running these machines for you
[00:19:06.250]know 15 plus years two machines per facility at least really has given us a
[00:19:11.890]lot of intellectual property that no one else has and then the value-added
[00:19:17.170]service piece being able to do all the sticky value-added services that make it
[00:19:22.630]kind of valuable for us is is great to leverage and then probably the the
[00:19:28.470]continuous improvement
[00:19:29.410]we see a lot got a lot of different products coming across our our
[00:19:33.850]facilities a lot of different packaging designs stuff that does work stuff that
[00:19:38.110]doesn't work when it doesn't work it blows up machine gets all dirty we got
[00:19:41.470]to clean it and all that kind of stuff so you know we have the ability to to be
[00:19:46.150]a good partner be a good consultant with customers to really kind of help them
[00:19:50.250]with the different packaging opportunities that they have and the
[00:19:53.990]different products
[00:19:55.030]alright again the same map map hasn't changed
[00:19:58.870]the only call out on this slide is really the the brands you know that to
[00:20:04.150]have a hundred and fifty plus brands and growing under roof you know companies
[00:20:08.830]that trust us with their product trust us with their supply chain trust us and
[00:20:12.730]getting product you know correctly HPP and handled to get the consumer to have
[00:20:18.130]them purchase their product is pretty cool so we're really proud about that
[00:20:22.030]it's something that we need to just continue to grow but then we look
[00:20:26.350]forward to doing that and then
[00:20:28.330]two billion pounds being processed it's a lot of pounds being processed so you
[00:20:33.770]know I think that speaks to our ability to kind of manage the customer
[00:20:38.090]expectations and the needs that we've seen over the years and that will
[00:20:41.410]continue to grow all right last slide so in general you know really as a company
[00:20:50.330]love the love the opportunity that we've got ahead of us conversations that we
[00:20:54.630]have our customers are at all different levels but at the end of the
[00:20:57.790]day you know we're all about letting customers stay focused on what they
[00:21:01.690]should be focused on all right and then to do it in a way that isn't gonna put a
[00:21:07.210]lot of capex stress on their business and then allow them to pretty seamlessly
[00:21:12.770]work with us on managing through the seasonal fluctuations the volume
[00:21:17.230]fluctuations it's not good to invest all this money and have a machine sitting
[00:21:21.310]idle you want to have it run in six six and a half days seven days a week with
[00:21:25.270]steady you know volume throughout the week
[00:21:27.250]that's not easy to do if you're a single facility one machine type of
[00:21:34.090]atmosphere and then from a from our perspective we're going to continue to
[00:21:38.690]focus on you know the HPP value-added service world 24/7 we manage and
[00:21:44.890]maintain the equipment and the labor demands that's what we're good at that's
[00:21:47.410]what we're built for and then with the managing the complexities of the volume
[00:21:51.490]machine downtime and all the little unknowns that happen with the equipment
[00:21:55.990]that's again
[00:21:56.710]what we're kind of built for and then the consolidation of additional service
[00:22:01.030]under one roof
[00:22:01.990]you know we can be that throat to choke you don't mind being that that that
[00:22:05.650]group and that company so with that right on questions thoughts
[00:22:16.810]you
[00:22:18.870]Thank you.

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