Wenger: Multimillion-dollar expansion and upgrade of World-Renowned innovation and development center
Wenger has begun work on a $13 million renovation project to expand and modernize the Wenger Technical Center in Sabetha, Kan (USA).
The Wenger Technical Center is a facility dedicated to innovation and continuous improvement of extrusion process systems for food, feed and industrial applications. The Wenger Technical Center houses full-scale extruders, dryers and ancillary components to provide a real-world development environment for extrusion-based products and processes. A recognized proving ground for innovation and training, the center is used by clients, academia and other industry partners for accelerating product development and operational training.
“This renovation is a strategic reinvestment into a facility that has long served our industries as the critical hub for innovation and continuous improvement,” says Lafe Bailey, Co-CEO and President of Sales and Corporate Development. “The Technical Center has held global importance to the extrusion industry since 1954, and we are committed to both renewing, and expanding, the roles and responsibilities that the Wenger Technical Center holds in the industries we serve.”
The new construction will increase the existing 22,000-square-foot center’s capacity by 40 percent, making the facility more scalable and extending its lifespan long into the future. The modernization will include enhancing preventative measures for food safety, and the added square footage will make the center more versatile. It will expand the scope of market-facing services while also further enhancing existing innovation projects already active in the Wenger pipeline.
“As our industries face increased scrutiny over food safety, the new Wenger Technical Center will provide a low-risk environment to evaluate prototypes and make sure new products and processes adhere to safety and quality standards,” says Brend King, Vice President and Technical Center Director.
“We’re very excited for this expansion as it will allow us to continue helping clients—and Wenger—move ideas from concept to market more quickly.”
By operating commercial-scale equipment, Wenger has the ability to scale up production runs to achieve real-life capacities, which is usually not possible in an R&D environment. “By staging a full-scale production setup, clients can truly see what these machines can do, and they don’t have to settle for a projection of performance based on calculations,” Bailey says. “No other innovation center of its kind has this breadth of capabilities.”