ABILENE, TX – Prairie Dog Pet Products is set to invest $18 million in 2021 to help expand its manufacturing facilities in Abilene, Texas, and Montrose, Colo. The dog treat company had made an initial investment of $2.5 million earlier in 2020. The move is an effort to up its output across its manufactured product lines as well as to increase food safety and innovation, officials said in a statement.
“We’re focused on each facility becoming world class in quality, sustainability and efficiency,” said Ted Mischaikov, CEO at Prairie Dog Pet Products, which is managed by the investment firm Kinderhook Industries LLC. “Each investment is interwoven into the fabric of processes and products we are creating across frozen, freeze dried, air dried, and smoked treats and diets. Our goal is to provide large volumes of higher quality and more innovative dried products for our private label and co-pack business partners.”
Areas of expansion center around low temperature, low impact technologies that help retain nutritional profiles in pet food as well as kitchen upgrades to increase efficiency, according to officials.
The Abilene plant will install 300 percent more freeze-dried capacity in 2021 with additional equipment designated solely for research and development, officials reported. To support freeze-dried volumes and initiate frozen diets, the Abilene facility is also installing “significant” individual quick freeze (IQF) technology.
Both the Abilene and Montrose facilities have kitchen expansions underway, including process redundancies and flexibility of forming abilities, according to officials. Both facilities have already undergone overhauls from analog to digital controls to “optimize yield and allow full visibility of every step of the cooking process in real time.” Volume increases are underway with increased air flow commensurate with truck capacity increases, as well as new steam support systems.
The company’s antler product in Montrose has moved into a new facility, which is more than three times larger than the previous facility, due to an increased demand for premium natural chews and strengthened supplier relationships, officials said.
Prairie Dog Pet Products officials said that they are also interviewing various municipalities with “strong economic development goals” as potential locations for new corporate offices and a research and development department, which will co-locate with a new state-of-the-art smoking and air-drying production plant aimed at increasing its treat line by 250 percent, according to officials.
“These capital and process initiatives will increase our prowess and capacity to create the clean, healthy nutrition customers expect and their pets absolutely deserve,” Mischaikov said. “We’re advancing aggressively into the future technologies and processes that best serve our brand partners and the pets they feed. It’s an exciting time to work at Prairie Dog.”
