(Radio Iowa) – The Nestle Purina Plant in Clinton is running at increased capacity after a 156 million dollar expansion of its production lines that upped its capacity for dog and cat food by roughly 80-thousand tons. Plant manager, Justin Wilkinson says another key addition was a technical training center for employees.  “As we continue to grow, and we continue to bring in newer associates, new members to our team, we needed to do a better job of teaching them how do we make pet food,” Wilkinson says. He says the nearly 575 employees are able to go to the center and use an ipad to call up a video to learn new information.

“They watch the video on how to how to do a certain set of tasks and so that area is blocked off and left open 24/7 for that, self learning time,” he says. Wilkinson the plant isn’t like the old days where workers stand shoulder to shoulder on an assembly line, as technology is a big part of the process. “Every operator has an iPad and they use that iPad to show how well we’re running, they’ve got a dashboard and so we can see hey, we’re running well or not running well,” he explains. “There’s still some manual pieces where we have to set things up, there’s still some manual pieces where we have to adjust things,but the extruder itself is very much you type in the settings and the control valves change if you want to put the right amount of water or different amount of steam or however, those things automatically do it.”

He says they do use some robots to stack the material on pallets as it is prepared for shipping. Wilkinson says some of the employees have been around long enough to remember when the process involved more manual labor. “They tell stories about having to hand stack 55 pounds of bags of dog Chow, onto a rail car, packing it to the roof, and we don’t do that anymore. And the robots we do have are to help stack those into pallets and get those to where we can automatically put those away,” he says. Wilkinson says they have used some Cobots that work closely with people in a few different areas — and that is one area they are interested in as they look at continuing to evolve and improve. The pet industry itself has evolved to where they also produce a lot of nutrition products for pets.

“An example of that is a product called Live Clear. We produce that here in Clinton, one of our specialties and the only spot we make it,” Wilkinson says. “So if you have an allergy to a cat, there is a product that you can feed the cat which helps reduce the dander which helps reduce your allergies.” He says it’s part of the changing way we look at pets. They were once animals that stayed outside, but are now welcomed into our homes.

“We have the culture that is rightfully, and it’s great to watch, treat them as a family member that is in the house and in the bed. And…we still have those products for those that have the farm dogs and throw the bag on the ground in the barn,” he says. The Clinton plant produces animal treats along with the dry food. Nestle Purina has another dry food factory in Davenport, and a plant that makes wet food in Fort Dodge.