Production without buying the production line. Your product runs on the same commercial systems we engineer and sell, and it comes back as your product — lighter by exactly the water it gave up.
Most contract quotes start at step three. Starting there is how a run gets priced on the wrong assumption and re-quoted after the first batch.
1 — Your product gets characterized. Starting moisture, target finished moisture, structure, fat content, and how it loads onto a tray. Fat loads the condenser differently. Structure decides whether the shelf can serve the product at all. This step is not paperwork; it is the step that sets everything downstream.
2 — The run is sized from water load. The pounds of water that must leave your batch — not a generic machine rating — set the schedule and the pricing structure. Run your own numbers first with the sizing calculator so you arrive knowing what you are buying.
3 — Your material stays yours. In toll processing you keep ownership the whole way through. Co-packing adds packaging, so product returns retail-ready under your brand.
4 — The commitment is written for your product. No blanket capacity or turnaround numbers, because those depend on your product’s form factor. What we commit to, we commit to in writing, per product.
A high-fat raw pet treat, a heat-sensitive botanical extract and a high-moisture fruit do not dry the same way, and pretending otherwise is how cycles go wrong.
Food and ingredients. Fruit, vegetables, prepared meals, dairy, candy, and ingredient streams — sized to your moisture load and your finished-moisture spec rather than a category default.
Pet food. Raw treats, toppers and complete diets. High-fat, high-protein formats load the condenser hard, which is exactly the case where an undersized condenser turns a 24-hour plan into something else.
Nutraceutical and botanical. Supplements, extracts and actives, where low-temperature water removal is protecting the thing the buyer is actually paying for.
Development runs. Proving a product, a pack format or a cycle before anyone commits capital. If you are deciding between contracting and buying, say so on the quote form — sizing the run and sizing the machine are the same arithmetic, and we do both.
We sell machines and we run product, so we have no structural reason to push you either way. Here is how the decision actually falls.
Contract makes sense when volume is unproven, demand is seasonal, the product is still moving, or you need production before you need a plant. You are converting a capital decision into a per-run cost while the numbers firm up.
Owning makes sense when the water load is steady and predictable enough that capital is cheaper than per-run cost over the life of the machine, and when you want the cycle recipe, the schedule and the quality loop in your own building.
The crossover is arithmetic, not opinion: your annual water load, your per-run contract cost, and the capital and operating cost of owning. We will run it with you, and we will tell you when the answer is "not yet."
In toll processing, yes — start to finish. In co-packing the product also returns packaged under your brand. Either way the recipe and the brand are yours; we are paid for the run, not for the product.
Send the product description: batch weight, starting moisture, target finished moisture and how it loads. That gives the water load, which is what a run is actually priced from. Guessing at those numbers produces a quote that changes after the first batch, which helps nobody.
Yes. Cycle development — freeze rate, loading depth, pretreatment, shelf temperature staging, where primary drying ends — is normally the first work on a new product, and it is done on your actual material at production scale rather than in a lab beaker.
Yes, and we would rather do that than sell you runs you should not be buying. The crossover is arithmetic: annual water load against per-run cost against the cost of owning.