National Food Plants
Plant Construction, Engineering, and Design Services
Shambaugh’s food process engineering group is a nationally recognized Food Plant Builder. Lead by uniquely skilled individuals, our Food Processing team offers more than 400 years of combined food processing plant engineering experience in the design of highly automated hygienic systems for the dairy, beverage, meat, and snack-food industries.
Our specialties lie in the design and construction of FDA, USDA, BRC, cGMP and SQF Level 3 compliant facilities. These services are bolstered by our design-build construction philosophy, which helps ensure accountability for life safety, constructability, serviceability, sanitation, and ergonomic issues.
We constantly strive to improve profitability of our customers' facilities through the design and implementation of cutting-edge systems that reduce energy and operational costs.
Areas of Expertise:
- Food processing engineering of plant-based yogurts, milks, and meat
- Food-processing plant engineering systems/equipment layout and design
- Dry materials handling
- Clean-in-place (CIP) process design
- Steam-in-place (SIP)
- Process/CIP optimization
- Product loss reduction
- Batch and continuous product blending
- Product heat treatment, including high temperature short time (HTST) and ultra-high temperature (UHT) systems
- Filtration, membrane, and centrifugal separation
- Unitized and pre-tested complete hygienic systems built entirely in our Food Processing Fabricating Plant and delivered to your facility
Food Processing Plant Modeling
We leverage 3D BIM models and "real-time" simulation software for liquid batch processing, packaging lines, spiral freezing application with complex conveyor and palletizing systems, meat processing and packaging consumer products blending, and packaging productivity enhancements.
We also utilize AutoMod and AutoStat simulation software as qualitative tools for measuring food process equipment performance, eliminating bottlenecks, optimizing resource quantities and efficiency, confirming constructability, estimating actual capacity, and planning for future production capacity.
Award-Winning Service
We have earned a reputation in the food process industry for delivering top-tier facilities with the latest process, refrigeration, and material handling technologies. In fact, we hold the distinction of having been the design-build team behind 16 Plant of the Year Food Processing Facilities, demonstrating innovation in food manufacturing and state-of-the-art design.
Our projects have earned multiple national awards—across a variety of categories—including T. Marzetti Company’s 220,000-square-foot salad dressing facility; a high-tech, 1-million-square-foot Greek yogurt plant for Chobani and a 215,000-square-foot, high-purity fluid milk and beverage plant for Kroger. In 2018, the nation’s largest milk drying facility, designed and built for Dairy Farmers of America was recognized and honored with Sustainable Plant of the Year, and 2019's Plant of the Year accolades were awarded to Valley Milk LLC, for their 136,000-square-foot USDA dairy dryer processing plant. In 2021, MWC, LLC, in St. Johns, MI, won the ProFood World Magazine’s 2021 Manufacturing Innovation Award. The 400,000 sf cheese processing and whey drying facility was completed on-time and under-budget during a pandemic. See the Case Study and Video tour of the plant.
Food Process Design Innovations
- Ingredient addition stacks/vertical piping
- Efficient product recovery techniques
- CIP of contained processes and of food process equipment
- Application of mix-proof valve technology
- Ergonomic milk-receiving swing arm
- Membrane technology as a continuous process
- CIP of snack foods/breakfast cereal/fast foods
- Simplification of masa feed systems
- Continuous blending of consumer pharmaceuticals