Prairie Farms and Hiland Dairy receive plant and product excellence awards

DENVER — Prairie Farms Dairy and its joint venture partner, Hiland Dairy, demonstrated their commitment to quality by winning 33 awards at the annual QCS Purchasing Cooperative Conference in Denver.

The conference features a gathering of quality leaders from food and beverage companies across the country for recognition of plant and product excellence achievements.

Judging for the competition was conducted by independent food and beverage marketing industry leaders.

One of the biggest wins for both Prairie Farms and Hiland Dairy is the QCS Best Collaboration Award, the celebration of a collaboration between a member and a supply partner to solve a problem or achieve a desired outcome.

This year’s award recognized a collaboration between Prairie Farms, Hiland Dairy, Vital Pack and Paragon Films to improve the stretch film wrapping functions at each dairy processing plant.

A new standardized process for stretch wrapping at all plants resulted in a significant increase in efficiencies and substantial plastic waste reduction.

Prairie Farms and Hiland Dairy were also finalists for the collaboration award thanks to a partnership with Ecolab to achieve efficiencies by using a new CIP water management system. The innovative system helped both companies save water, reduce risk and minimize energy use.

Other big wins for Prairie Farms and Hiland Dairy processing plants include 10 Merit of Excellence Awards in the fluid milk and cultured products categories.

Because QCS compliance levels are well above industry standards, achieving these awards is a challenging, yet rewarding, recognition of their efforts.

The 10 plants receiving this award include:

Fluid Milk

• Prairie Farms Dairy: Anderson, Indiana; Dubuque, Iowa; Jefferson City, Missouri; Olney, Illinois; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

• Hiland Dairy: Little Rock, Arkansas; and Springfield, Missouri.

Cultured

• Prairie Farms Dairy: Carbondale, Illinois; and Quincy, Illinois.

• Hiland Dairy: Omaha, Nebraska.

“Our quality and management teams work hard to make excellence a priority at our plants and I could not be more proud to receive these awards,” said Matt McClelland, CEO and executive vice president for Prairie Farms.

“Our dairy farmers are providing the freshest high-quality milk to our plants, so it’s important that our quality processes continue all the way through to the grocery store shelf.”

To cap off a successful year of excellence, 22 plants within the Prairie Farms’ network received QCS Quality & Food Safety Plant Assessment Awards.

Plants receiving this award must achieve a formal Quality and Food Safety Audit score of 96% or higher by demonstrating a level of organizational excellence and quality assurance.