Snak King plays in both the conventional and organic snack categories, which requires some added quality assurance measures during ingredient handling and sanitation stages. As a part of bringing Snak King to Freeport, Ill., the acquired facility had to adapt to organic procedures.
The company implemented a quality assurance process for its receiving procedures to ensure that every ingredient brought into the building is what it is supposed to be, said David Bull, vice-president of operations, Freeport division.
“Currently, we have a pretty broad-scale material handling and racking system upgrade going on to give us the ability to store a larger variety of ingredients and to keep them isolated, which is important from an allergen and organic perspective,” he said as he explained the new racking system being put into place in the ingredient warehouse.
To take on organic products, the Freeport team also had to implement new sanitation procedures to keep up with stringent organic certification requirements. As a facility that produces both conventional and organic snacks, the Freeport sanitation team must go through an extensive documented cleaning process whenever the line changes over from a standard product to organic.
“There are some things that we’ve learned by doing that we like to use in our day-to-day processes as well,” Mr. Bull said. “I would say that bringing on the organic business has raised the bar in terms of how we do everything from storage to sanitation processes.”
