Chamber Tours: American Proteins, Inc.

    As employees and administrators of American Proteins, Inc. readily admit, the nature of the work at their Hanceville plant is not particularly glamorous.
    The company's products do not roll from the assembly line gleaming with a well-polished shine and will likely never grace a showroom floor.
    However, the men and women of American Proteins may take comfort in the knowledge that the products they manufacture help support the agriculture industry throughout the United States.
    Not to mention the fact that by "recycling" poultry by-products into premium pet food ingredients - which are used in domestic dog and cat foods as well as in protein-rich feed for cattle and poultry farming - American Proteins helps turn unwanted refuse (that would otherwise clog landfills nationwide) into a useful product.

Plant Manager Frankie Daniel leads a Chamber tour group through
American Proteins, Inc., located in Hanceville.

American Proteins, Inc. (API) began in 1949 as the North Georgia Rendering Company, a small family business. Headquartered in Cumming, Ga., the company now operates three plants: one in Cumming, one in Cuthbert, Ga., and the Hanceville operation, which is the largest. The Hanceville division was purchased by American Protein in 1979, at which time Group Vice President Fred Cespedes came to Cullman County to direct the facility.

API Group Vice President Fred Cespedes discusses the operation
of the Hanceville facility with a member of the Chamber tour group.

    "When I came here in 1979, we were producing three million pounds per week," Cespedes said. "Now, we produce 37 million pounds per week."
    "Our biggest product is the dog food, which is the main plant. We also produce poultry meal, feather meal and poultry oil."
    American Proteins processes some four billion pounds of poultry by-products annually. The Hanceville plant, with two factories onsite, has an annual production of 1.9 billion pounds of poultry products.
    According to company officials, the Hanceville plant produces 34 percent of the nation's inedible poultry products and 85 percent in Alabama.
   The largest poultry rendering complex in the world, American Proteins' Hanceville division employs 250 persons with a fleet of 90 drivers who haul raw materials in and finished product out of the facility.

"Ninety-five percent of our workforce is from Cullman County," Cespedes added. "We have very close ties with the community."
Cespedes admitted that finding people who want to work with poultry by-products isn't always an easy task.

    "It's an unusual place to work. We have a different sort of person who works here," Cespedes said. "They're all great employees. It's hard to get people to work here because of the type of product that we produce. It's a different kind of fleet, too."
    Jim Smith, Fleet Manager for API Hanceville, elaborated on the special requirements inherent to driving for API.
    "What you don't eat, I haul," Smith began. "Blood, feathers, all the parts of the chicken that aren't sold in the supermarkets."
    "What we haul away and bring here, if buried instead, would fill all of the landfills in the United States within 18 months. So, we're a necessary evil, you might say."
    Smith said that one of utmost directives the fleet must follow is that they must "get the product here on time and fresh."
    To that end, API Hanceville runs two shift of drivers who, last year, brought in over 40,000 loads and left the plant with 6,500 truckloads of finished product.
    Inside the plant, however, much of the work is automated and is handled by state-of-the-art machines that, fortunately for the employees, take care of the more unpleasant tasks involved in processing the poultry.

A truck is filled with poultry meal and prepared for departure. .

A huge control room overlooking the plant floor contains bank upon bank of consoles dedicated to running the machinery below. Three large cookers and four extruders run around the clock, preparing the meat for processing. Each of the bright red cookers stands over one story tall and cooks 45,000 lbs. of meat per hour.

Each of the large cookers in the American Proteins
main plant handles 45,000 lbs. of poultry per hour.

     American Proteins' customer roster reads like a list of who's who of dog food manufacturers including Heinz, Hills and Ralston among others. With such an illustrious group on the receiving end of the company's product flow, it is no surprise that exacting standards must be met by the Hanceville plant.
    "The pet food companies require us to test every half hour," said plant manager Frankie Daniel as he showed Chamber tour group members the inside of the company's onsite testing laboratory.
    "We have two protein machines so that while one is running, we can begin testing the next sample," he said. "The protein lab runs around the clock: three eight-hour shifts. Each truck that leaves this plant gets a certificate of analysis for the load."
    Aside from the care that goes into each shipment of pet food products on a daily basis, the company is constantly improving the factory and campus itself and refining the process by which they create their product.
    "We spend about $3 million in capital projects each year," Cespedes said. "We added a wastewater treatment plant in 1997. We're not planning any [expansions] now, but if there is a need to expand, we can."
     For more information about American Proteins, Inc. and the Hanceville Plant, visit www.americanproteins.com or contact the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce. For more pictures from the Chamber of Commerce tour of the Hanceville facility, click on the thumbnails below.



An exterior view of the main plant.	An exterior view of the main plant.	A truck is prepared for shipment.	Frankie Daniel leads the Chamber tour group around the plant's exterior..

The tour group views the control room of the plant.	The tour group on the plant floor.	A view of the plant interior.	A view of the plant interior.

Daniel takes the tour group to the protein lab.	Poultry by products prior to cooking and grinding.		Ground poultry meal.