BURLEY, IDAHO — Nestled in Idaho’s Magic Valley, a new fluid milk contract manufacturer is working to meet surging demand for aseptic/ultra-high temperature (UHT) and extended shelf life (ESL) beverages.

Burley, Idaho-based Suntado LLC broke ground on its new facility in August 2022 and fully opened its doors for commercial business in June of this year.

The facility is owned by Dirk Reitsma and Jesus Hurtado, who respectively own nearly 6,000 organic and 30,000 conventional dairy cows within 20 miles of the processing facility, supplying fresh local milk to the plant. The Suntado name combines the “Sun” from Reitsma’s Sunrise Organic Dairy, while the “tado” is part of Hurtado’s last name.

“This vertically integrated facility and our product offerings are completely different than anything out there right now,” said Tory Nichols, office of the chief executive officer, Suntado. “I’m energized by the fact that we’ve built this plant from the ground up, creating a secure, locally sourced milk supply.”

Meeting the need

The new plant’s motto is: Taste the quality.

Suntado produces aseptic dairy beverages in its sustainable 190,000-square-foot processing plant that sits on 23 acres of land.

As a vertically integrated Class 1 and Class 2 processor and contract manufacturer with easy access to both regular and organic milk, Suntado provides brands greater flexibility, reduced overhead for product launches and marketing, and eliminates concerns about warehouse storage and distribution, all while allowing companies to reap the benefits of bringing sterile UHT or ESL products to market quickly.

This verticality model allows milk to be processed and packaged the same day, and the short distance to travel from farm to the plant helps keep Suntado’s carbon footprint low.

“Anytime you can process milk from the cow to the package within 24 hours, you make a superior product that enhances a brand or private label,” Nichols said.

Suntado offers a variety of dairy products, including plain 1% and 2% milk, lactose-free varieties, and flavors such as chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Additionally, Suntado can produce half and half, creamers, cold brew coffee, heavy whipping cream, ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages, as well as plant-based beverages.

Unlike many co-manufacturers, Suntado is not producing its own branded product; the facility instead enables retailers and national brands to create private label beverage products. Nichols said the company strives to ensure that customers can be fully confident that the contents and labeling on the carton are accurate.

Suntado is QAI certified, organic certified and kosher certified, which ensures the company maintains stringent food safety requirements.

Nichols said Suntado takes protecting the brand integrity of their customers very seriously.

“We call our customers our partners, because they really are,” Nichols said. “What our brand partners and private label partners need from us is to have full food safety certification. In an effort to protect the brand, they want to ensure that we have all the proper certifications for their products.”

Jesus Hurtado, co-owner, Suntado LLC facility, in Burley, Idaho.

| Photo: Suntado LLC

Dairy farmer roots

Suntado’s journey started as a conversation between the late John Reitsma and his son, Dirk, and Hurtado at the Jerome County Airport back in 2018.

As a second-generation dairy farmer, Dirk Reitsma has continued to build upon the legacy established by his father. He remains the owner and manager of Sunrise Organic Dairy.

Under Reitsma’s leadership, Sunrise Organic Dairy is one of the country’s largest organic milk-producing farms, yielding approximately 400,000 lbs of organic milk daily. The farm encompasses two state-of-the-art milking barns, 5,500 acres and a herd of 5,500 cows.

Sunrise Organic Dairy is home to a team of 100 employees and Reitsma’s approach to dairy farming has earned him certifications in Organic, non-GMO and Validus, for producing milk to the highest standards.

Dirk Reitsma, co-owner, Suntado LLC facility, in Burley, Idaho.

| Photo: Suntado LLC

Hurtado came to the US from Mexico as a teenager and began milking on dairy farms in Idaho. In his 20s, he found work as a milker on one of John Reitsma’s dairy farms. John helped Hurtado buy his first dozen milking cows and housed them with the farm’s dairy herd. John saw potential in Hurtado and moved him to a herd manager on the farm before eventually encouraging him to start his own dairy. John was an early investor in Hurtado when he struck out on his own.

Today, he manages his own dairy, Hurtado Dairy, which produces 2 million lbs of conventional milk daily. The operation has eight advanced milking barns and houses a herd of 28,000 cows. Spanning 5,000 acres, the dairy has more than 300 employees.

With a commitment to maintaining high standards, Hurtado is FARMS Certified, signifying a dedication to responsible and ethical practices.

When John passed away in 2019 at the age of 71, the two dairymen took over where he left off. Now Hurtado, Dirk and their dairy futures are intertwined through their co-investment in Suntado.

Building for the future

Suntado officially registered as an LLC in January 2022 and the planning and design of the Suntado plant began 15 months before the team broke ground.

In January 2023, the foundation was poured, and framing began in June 2023. Construction was completed in April 2024. However, the work didn’t stop there, as commissioning, certification and initial production runs still needed to be completed.

Suntado hired architecture and design firm E.A. Bonelli, RSP Design and Big-D Construction, among other partners, to design, engineer and build the state-of-the-art facility.

Like many other food and beverage facilities built after the pandemic, Suntado faced significant supply chain challenges during the construction process. However, with the help of Big-D Construction, they successfully overcame these obstacles and completed the plant in under two years from the start of construction.

“I couldn’t imagine not having Big-D as our partner early on,” Nichols said. “The way it was driven from a high level, keeping all of the vendors and the vendors’ support aligned along the multiple levels and multiple calls that were scheduled each week. Whether it was design, engineering, or electrical engineering or whatever it was, it was very, very organized and planned out and they didn’t miss a single timeline.”

The plant currently has the capacity to process 800,000 to 1 million lbs of milk a day, according to Nichols.

Virtually all of the plant’s planned capacity, which is about 70% of its current total capacity, was already booked by clients who lined up before the plant opened.

“We have strategically only sold the capacity that we want to put ourselves under,” said Nichols. “That doesn’t mean that the equipment can’t run it, it just means that, in an effort to protect Suntado’s brand, we need to protect the customer’s brand and that means that we need to crawl, walk, run.”

Photo: Sosland Publishing

Nichols said there is a very methodical plan in place to ramp up production. The goal is to be running at 80% capacity by the end of January.

“It’s our plan to talk to our current customers and ask them if they need more capacity,” he said. “And if they’re not in need of new capacity, we have a rather large list of companies that are just sitting there waiting.”

When it came to building the team at Suntado, finding the right talent has been crucial. Many employees have extensive experience in dairy processing due to the high number of dairies in Idaho, which is the third-largest dairy-producing state in the US with 376 dairies, nearly 700,000 cows and 20 dairy processing facilities, now including Suntado.

“There’s a few challenges out there,” said Russ Lucas, Suntado’s plant manager, who joined the company in May 2023. “One is that there’s a lot of competition in dairy out here. But that works both ways because we were able to recruit some folks that have relevant experience.”

Lucas said one of the obstacles is teaching and training aseptic processing, which is different than what some employees may be used to in traditional dairy plants. There’s more discipline required, and extra care for sanitation, as well as packaging, he said.

Initially, the company hired just enough people to get through commissioning and training to understand the equipment. The trail runs were an important element to ensure the plant was ready to begin commercial production.

“The trials are where you learn from the bad as much as you do the good,” Nichols said. “Of all the trials we’ve ran, I don’t think we had a single trial that we would make the mistake twice. And that’s why we chose to limit our capacity in the beginning so the team can figure out how to perfect that system. And once they perfect it: turn on the floodgates, bring on the volume.”

Ahead of commercial production, Suntado aggressively hired to meet business needs, reaching 100 employees by October and planning for 166 by December. With a goal of 24/7 production by mid-2025, building the right environment for employee retention has been a key focus.

“We were really focused on getting good culture in the in the plant to start off and we want to continue that route,” Lucas said.

Suntado currently has two processing lines and six fillers: four aseptic and one ESL from Tetra Pak, and one ESL from Pactiv Evergreen. The plant was built with extra space to triple its capacity in the future, with the ability to house up to six processors and 18 filling lines. At current full capacity, Suntado can produce more than 33 million gallons a year. If and when it expands, capacity will increase to processing 100 million gallons annually.

Suntado’s eco-friendly initiatives and operational efficiencies also position the company as a strong contender in the marketplace as it enters its first year of business. Aseptic containers allow Suntado to produce shelf-stable milk and beverages for global customers without refrigeration until opened. This reduces energy use, minimizes waste through longer production runs and requires less cold storage. As a result, the plant’s cold storage areas are smaller than the ambient storage, and an offsite warehouse is being built to add 8,000 pallet spaces for increased aseptic storage capacity.

One of the other challenges Nichols noted was IT integration and setting up the systems to blend ERP and the company’s NetSuite solutions. As a contract manufacturer, Suntado relies on these systems to ensure its customers’ products are formulated correctly while in production at the facility.

“From formulating all of our customers’ products and their ingredients and how that has to be all inputted and created is a whole other level of complexity,” he said.

Photo: Tetra Pak

An ideal partnership

Supplier relationships have been crucial to Suntado’s launch, especially its partnership with Tetra Pak, the international food and beverage packaging that produces a variety of aseptic, shelf stable packaging.

Many of the products produced by Suntado will be packaged in Tetra Pak cartons, ranging in sizes from 8.5 to 33.8 oz.

In addition to packaging, Tetra Pak’s processing equipment can be found throughout Suntado’s facility, from separators to filling machines. Tetra Pak filling and packaging equipment can process regular pasteurized milk and creamers that stay fresh in the refrigerator for two to three weeks, and refrigerated ESL products that stay fresh for up to 120 days.

The initial lines at Suntado include five Tetra Pak shelf stable and ESL packaging lines — two TT/3 filling machines, two A3/Flex aseptic filling and one A3/Compact Flex aseptic filling machine.

The partnership between Suntado and Tetra Pak has been instrumental in ensuring the success of the new venture, Nichols said.

“I think every time we came against a challenge where we felt like we needed to pivot, they delivered,” he said. “Tetra Pak is invested in us as much as we are invested in them.”

Mat Rutz, vice president of contract manufacturing for Tetra Pak US and Canada, said what Suntado is offering the marketplace is what their customers are seeking.

“Suntado has a fantastic foresight into the future of what they’re investing in now to enable many years of success,” Rutz said. “They’re very visionary, strategic and a great partner. Our customers are their customers, and this is what our customers have been asking for.”

The beverage market has changed dramatically, said Pedro Gonçalves, vice president of marketing for Tetra Pak US and Canada. And he sees Suntado as the future.

“Dairy is still the biggest platform to bring innovation to the marketplace,” he said. “That means we will have more diversification in the industry … We see Suntado as a key player in bringing these types of products to (market).”

Looking ahead

While 95% of the plant’s portfolio is focused on dairy products, Suntado is equipped with ample capacity to innovate and reshape the traditional dairy and alternative beverage market.

“I think what’s important is that our owners are dairymen and our priority is to make dairy beverages,” Nichols said. “But they’re also entrepreneurs and they understand that when you make a capital investment like this, at some point, to keep something of this scale running, you’re going to make other products.”

At the beginning of October, Suntado was running commercialized products on four of its six filling systems, with plans to begin full commercialized product on the fifth line by the middle of the month.

“It’s progressing very fast, as expected,” Nichols said. “We’ve had a few small bumps in the road, but it’s going very smooth.” The company plans to be up to full production and full capacity by May 2025.

As far as what’s ahead, the company is focused on meeting the needs of its customers and of consumers.

“Suntado will be very focused on ramping up and looking toward the future and toward high protein drinks,” said Nichols. “We’re just very optimistic and very, very busy. The milk supply is in demand, organic and conventional, and we’re very fortunate that we’re vertically integrated and have our own supply.”