Sharon Spielman, Food Engineering (SS): Tell me briefly about Great Lakes HPP and your Garden Salsa brand, which I understand was eventually sold.

Dave Zilko (DZ): Jack Aronson, a world champion softball player, founded Garden Fresh Gourmet in the back of his bankrupt restaurant just outside of Detroit. Literally out of desperation, Jack was trying to pay his electric bill, he pulled out a five gallon bucket and peeled some onions by hand and created, in roughly 15 minutes, what is today Garden Fresh Artichoke Garlic Salsa.

Jack and I became partners shortly thereafter and we, along with Jack’s wife Annette, and a lot of other very talented people, proceeded to build Garden Fresh into the No. 1 brand in North America before selling in 2015 to a Fortune 500 company for almost a quarter billion dollars.

Our mantra was that it was more important to be the best rather than the biggest, and to maintain our flavor profile
never stopped making Garden Fresh Salsa the exact way Jack did in the back of that bankrupt restaurant; peeling onions by hand and in five gallon buckets, even though by the time we sold the company we were producing 85 tons of fresh salsa a day.

I wrote a book about our adventures. Wiley & Sons distributed it nationwide in May of 2016.

SS: When creating your salsa brand, did you use a toller or did you move right into HPP? What was the impetus for opening Great Lakes HPP?

DZ: At Garden Fresh, Jack was a true visionary with respect to HPP’s potential, and we got our first Avure HPP machine in 2008. Between then and the time we sold to Campbell’s Soup Company, we would order two more.

Our Garden Fresh Gourmet Salsa was all-natural, thus HPP prevented fermentation and extended our shelf life. We were also able to offer retailers such as Whole Foods an all-natural hummus, via HPP, and this was a true point of differentiation for us.

We, for a very short time, employed the services of an HPP toller while our first Avure machine was on order. At Garden Fresh, our volume was sufficient to support multiple HPP machines, but there’s no getting around the fact that HPP is a capital intensive process.

Thus, the value of engaging with tolling services is that companies can enjoy the benefits of HPP, and offer those differentiating benefits to their customers, without the upfront capital expense.

SS: What features were you looking for in your HPP equipment? How did Great Lakes HPP choose the equipment they ultimately purchased?

DZ: In 2008, HPP was still in its infancy. It was critical to partner with an HPP equipment supplier who could assist and educate Garden Fresh on all aspects of HPP technology. The needed resources ranged from installation requirements, machine commissioning, operation and maintenance training, regulatory requirements, and product development support. Avure met all of these with the added benefit of being a U.S.-based company.

One aspect Great Lakes took into consideration was the size of the machine and the annual HPP capacity it could generate. Avure’s largest machine, the AV-X, has the unique feature of being designed in a modular fashion that allows for increasing machine output by adding additional intensifiers (the engines that creates pressure) to speed up cycle times, thus increasing capacity. This allows for a smaller up front capital investment with the ability to increase capacity in the future.

SS: Can you offer any stats (financial, efficiency-wise, production-value, etc.) since becoming an HPP toller? Can you share information on the ROI for an HPP machine?

DZ: At Garden Fresh it was important to Jack that our HPP machines be backed by not only a high level of service but also a best-in-class research resource. He found just that at Avure. All our Garden Fresh HPP machines were Avures, and sure enough our HPP machine at Great Lakes HPP is an Avure as well.

SS: What were the biggest challenges when installing your own HPP machine(s)? (How many machines does Great Lakes HPP have? If more than one, do they differ from one another?) How were these overcome?

DZ: Great Lakes had the advantage of past experience at Garden Fresh to help us understand the challenges of installing an HPP machine, but installation still has its challenges. The HPP machines can weigh in excess of 180,000 lbs. and require a significant amount of electric power when building pressure. The weight requires a concrete pad to be poured to handle the weight and proper soil compaction to ensure the pad remains level. Electrical needs will need to be evaluated to ensure enough power is available to cycle the HPP intensifiers. Great Lakes has one HPP line, but has installed all of the necessary infrastructure for an identical second machine.

SS: If you had to do it over, would you change anything? What advice might you offer other companies that are thinking about purchasing their own HPP equipment?

DZ: The biggest challenge for Garden Fresh when we first started HPPing our salsa and hummus was the learning curve; it was substantial with respect to employing the proper packaging and pressurized hold times. The best advice we could give is to take advantage of the resources an HPP machine manufacturer such as Avure provides; they dramatically accelerated the ramp-up process for us.

SS: If you were to make lists of the pros and cons for both using a toller and owning HPP equipment, what would those lists look like?

DZ: Pros for tollers:
• Speed to market—Tollers have installed capacity to react quickly to HPP needs.
• Technical expertise—Tollers know the nuisances of product and packaging behavior through the system for HPP products.
• Known fixed costs—Manufacturers know their fixed HPP costs based the toller’s processing fee.
• Known regulatory requirements—Tollers know HPP and what role it plays into product manufacturing.
• Capital avoidance—HPP requires significant investment that can be avoided by using a toller.
• Equipment redundancy—Most tollers have multiple machines and/or alliances with other tollers in order to guarantee needed capacity in the event of equipment failure.

Cons for tollers:
• Cost for services—Self-manufacturing is less expensive than using a toller.
• Freight cost—The cost of freight to and from toller’s location.

Pros for self-manufacturing:
• Lower production cost—No toller’s margin.
• Extra freight avoidance—HPP processing in house.

Cons for self-manufacturing:
• Matching HPP throughout to manufacturing throughput—Different line speeds will require accumulation of product prior to or post HPP processing.
• Idle HPP machine due to product seasonality.
• Reacting to HPP machine downtime—HPP machines by their nature require a lot of maintenance and will have down time. Upstream manufacturing throughput may be effected.
• Large capital investment.
• Learning HPP technology—It takes time to learn how to run and efficiently maintain HPP equipment. FE