Sander Processing

In Celestine, the operation occupied an 80’ x 100’ processing plant when Jim made the decision to retire and pass the successful operation to his 4 children – Randy, Chris, Kent and Amy. The family’s concept was to create a small processing operation where Southern Indiana farmers could bring their own livestock for butchering and processing. By the mid-2020s, the backyard enterprise had grown to 2 locations — one in Celestine, Indiana, where the business was launched, and the second in nearby St. Anthony.

Between them, Sander Processing and Sander Family Meat Market have 2 retail stores and employ nearly 80 Hoosiers earning between $15 and $30 hourly — a rate that outpaces other local employers. With the slaughterhouse functioning as the foundation of the business, the company has expanded its services to include cooking and packaging cured meat and enjoys a wait list for cancellations in its processing services. A combined average of 105 head of cattle and 160 pigs are processed weekly at the 2 facilities, with another 300 head of cattle and 400 pigs purchased from local farmers and processed as freezer meat.

Company Vice President Kent Sander said the COVID-19 pandemic kick-started the business’s already steady growth when many larger plants across the nation were closed and smaller operations, such as Sander, stepped in to fill the resulting supply gaps. Kent was the leader who shepherded the company’s MRG grant applications and projects to “make things more efficient and be able to help more farmers,” he said.

With a goal of increasing capacity at by 50%, the 1^st project was installed to boost retail offerings at the St. Anthony Sander Family Meat Market and expand their geographic sales region. This was accomplished with a fully automatic fill and seal roll stock packaging machine. This machine inserts the product (processed meat) into polymer packaging, seals the packaging and automatically places the packages into cases for shipping or retail shelves. The resulting packages replaced the previous paper packaging, offering better aesthetics, easier identification of inspection labels and a longer product shelf life, an especially important advantage for private-label brand growth.

“Private labeling is a substantial part of our business,” Kent shared. “We’re butchering 40 head of cattle and 70 pigs a week for private labeling, including our own label. Those customers turn around and resell or distribute the products to restaurants, markets and retailers in Indiana, Kentucky, Chicago, and other Midwest areas. That business began for us in about 2010 when Farmers’ Markets became a big thing. People wanted to know where the food they’re buying came from, and that business took us from 5 private labeling accounts to around 45 between our 2 facilities.” In addition to establishing a more recognizable brand name for private labeling companies, the polymer packaging and labels used by the roll stock packaging machine allow them to advertise specific farming practices that may be attractive to retail customers.

As an example, Kent named one of the business’s primary accounts: Fischer Farms. “They’re doing carbon negative and regenerative farming and they market that,” he said. “Because these products are marketed to grocery stores, it’s important that the label allows it to go directly on the shelf. We work with a company that makes original labels with the farm’s artwork including design and logo, and Fischer goes through them to print labels that include the weight of the package, all the way down to the bar code. The label includes information that identifies it as processed by Sander Processing.”

Adopting this advanced equipment had positive side effects on their production as a whole – Sander reassigned the previous packaging machine to their “big cook” operations, simultaneously relieving multiple production bottlenecks and more effectively cater to the growing needs of local farmers.

Sander selected VC999 Packaging Systems Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacturing of vacuum chamber machines, as its supplier-partner and trainer for this project Kent’s brother Chris Sander supervised the installation and oversaw initial production and staffing requirements. Among his selections for advancement were 2 employees with 5 years’ experience at the company. One was promoted to help train and to oversee running the new processing/packaging room, while the other was promoted to take charge of the raw processing packaging area. The 2 are cross-trained to cover each area.

These investments allowed for a compliant response to USDA guidelines, increased production by at least 10% in the first year and offered the opportunity to grow both the variety and quantity of product sold for the future.

The new brine injector digitally weighs and records the product pre- and post-injection and keeps track of other USDA guidelines with a digital interface. The previous injection process was another production bottleneck for Sander that stood in the way of their growth, taking “just took too much time and manual staffing,” especially with all recordkeeping being done by hand on paper. Since implementation, The new equipment has reduced necessary brining personnel from 4 to 2 persons, allowing 2 former brine production people to be re-assigned to other processing functions and facilitate expansion, Kent said.

With similar tech-enabled capabilities, the other piece of Sander’s 2nd grant project — the new smokehouse — tracks all required elements of the cooking process digitally, supplementing previous hand documentation. This smokehouse provides a scientific approach to smoking with programmed recipes, products and the ability to tweak and improve recipes to meet market demands. These features and capabilities have allowed Sander to spin up a new jerky and roast beef line of production, expanding their offerings. The 26-year-old smokehouse it replaced had required staff to monitor and document gauges and temperature changes through the cooking process that ranged from 12 to 20 hours. Each manual check resulted in dramatic heat loss and energy inefficiency.

By significantly reducing employee hours expended on the manual checks, including the overnight “babysitting” of long smoking operations, the new smokehouse significantly reduces the risk of human error. Leveraging the combined efficiencies from both pieces of equipment, production logistics have been simplified and product is now able to move straight from injection to the smokehouse.

This combination of advanced equipment is not typically used by small meat processing operations. “This is new technology for Sander that is unusual for operations our size,” Kent acknowledged. “It’s part of our goal to become a cutting-edge facility that can be used as an industry standard for other small processors. The 2nd grant builds upon the smart technology advances achieved with our 1st project.”

When new technology is introduced onto a production floor, it can create concerns about how it will affect employee attitudes. People worry about losing their jobs, for instance. “In reality,” Kent pointed out, “they often are repurposed to jobs that are more enjoyable and less dangerous, which makes for a better workday. The new smokehouse, for instance, was a labor saver. We used to have 3 or 4 people working on pumping out hams and bacon, and then we’d have to push them off to the side. Now we get product brined, hung up and either moved into the smokehouse or the cooler. We didn’t lose jobs; we just moved people around to be more efficient.” In an environment such as meat processing, workplace safety is always a concern. When those sometimes-accident-prone processes can be automated it eliminates some of the more difficult and less stimulating work.” For instance, he said, the Sander employee application used to say that employees must be able to lift 70 pounds; that is no longer necessary. “With better equipment and automation, basically anyone of any size can be considered. You’re pushing buttons now. We’ll never get rid of all the manual labor,” he acknowledged, “but with our growth and additional equipment to work alongside these grant-assisted projects, we’ve been able to put in lifts and things like that to make the job less physically strenuous.”

There is a low barrier to entry for both current and new employees to become proficient in operating the new equipment, he said. “It has programs that control the process the employee keys in. We have 6 different programs at this point, so it’s just hitting one of the numbers — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 — moving some plates around inside the machine, and monitoring it. Employees who have been with us for a while were really receptive to the automation because they knew it was going to make the job easier for them.”

Sander Processing has always been a family business, and Kent’s mother recalls the early days where she used to double-wrap all processed meats by hand. She asked her son how difficult it was to learn to use the new equipment. “I said I can probably pull anyone off the street who’s willing to learn a little, and I can teach them how to use it,” he recalled. “She asked me the other day if that has been true. I said so far, yes. If they want to learn, I can teach them.”

“That first project was a computer-aided stuffer linking program and a clipper,” Kent recalled, “and those were game changers for our business. We were trying to enter the private labeling world and customers wanted certain size links. We were taking a stainless steel ‘yard stick’ and basically making sure we were getting the right size links and doing it all by hand. With the computerized system, we just program in that we want 1/3-pound links, hit the 1/3 button and it will spit out the 1/3-pound links.” The automatic clipper is an attachment. It replaced a stapler that stapled the product casings but was slow and unreliable; one of the Sander brothers was frequently making repairs. Still, it saved time and labor. Now, during deer season the facility can process about 4,000 pounds of bologna a day and be done by 5:50pm. “We’re looking into a newer automated clipper because the one we have is 12 years old and we run more than a million clips a year through it. It’s worn out,” Kent said.

With Sander’s extensive experience in enhancing their production capabilities, Kent is sold on the value of advanced manufacturing equipment. He’s learning from other small processers, as well. As an active member of the Indiana Meat Packers and Processors Association, he recommends asking questions of other professionals in the industry, rather than relying totally on sales pitches from vendors. “A salesman’s going to sell you want they want to sell and tell you want they want you to hear,” he advises. “But if you talk to people who have the machines, you’ll hear the good, the bad and the ugly. What you need to hear is why one of your peers bought what they did and where they did. What is the service like on the backend because nothing is ever perfect – and you’ll need service. Talk to people who have them,” he advised. “They’ll help you out.”

As for the Manufacturing Readiness Grant, he said, “It would be awesome if we all could have these machines – we appreciated the grants. It really helped us. Our businesses are thriving and we’ve been able to add employees and do more business.”