Pet Food Processing - January 2025 - 20

PLANT PROFILE
The freeze-dried
pet food category
is currently
a billion-dollar
market.
Captured Moments by Deanna
facility, from site design to equipment selection, Chad
Felderhoff was well suited to take on the role of executive
vice president of operations. He helps plant manager
Andre Watkins manage the Denton facility and oversee
operations at the legacy plant in Muenster.
Other new additions included Matt Donnell as chief
financial officer, Richard Eaken as director of quality,
Luis Caldera as head of supply chain and Angela Mizerek
as director of human resources. While the aforementioned
members of the management team brought in
years of experience from the human food side to their
new roles, Dave DeLorenzo, executive vice president of
sales and commercialization, and Ryan James, chief revenue
officer, are leveraging decades of pet food industry
expertise in their new positions.
Alongside the management team, close to 50 employees
work at the Denton facility - around 20 work on the
office side, the remainder operate the plant.
Supply and demand
Muenster's mission is " to be the preferred partner - formulator
and contract manufacturer - for the leading
freeze-dried product brands and retailers, " according to
Holdrieth. While the company does sell some product
under its Muenster label, the majority of the plant's production
(around 90%) goes toward private label or comanufacture
customers.
" We have a KPI (key performance indicator) that all of
our employees own, OTIF - on-time, and in full - which
is our measurement of how often we keep our promise to
our customers, " Holdrieth said. " I'm thrilled to say that we
are now operating in the 95th percentile, which is industry
leading. Our customers can count on us. "
Automation often gets a
bad name. It actually makes the
work more efficient and makes
employees better at their jobs. "
Chad Felderhoff, Muenster Milling
DeLorenzo added, " The overall market for freezedried
pet food is strong - it's currently around a billiondollar
market. The pet specialty channel is currently the
most developed channel, but there's a lot of opportunity
in the food, drug, mass and club channel - that's where
we're seeing the most growth.
" Now that we have the capacity,
we can reach out to larger customers, "
he said.
While freeze-dried pet food still
only makes up a small percentage of
pet food sales, Holdrieth was quick
to point out that the market will
quickly change when larger brands
start offering freeze-dried pet food.
Additionally, there has been a lot of
interest in kibble plus technology,
which allows a brand to blend in a
percentage of freeze-dried meat with
The multi-head scale bucket measures
the amount of product and
dumps it into individual packages
below. Captured Moments by Deanna
20 PET FOOD PROCESSING | Jan-Feb 2025 | www.petfoodprocessing.net
http://www.petfoodprocessing.net
Pet Food Processing - January 2025

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