From the President’s Desk: How Dietrich’s Dairy Became DSP

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The Dietrich family started in the milk business in 1926 as Dietrich’s Dairy, a retail fluid milk products company. From that starting point, Dietrich’s Milk Products (DMP) was formed in 1952 to make milk powders. In 1969, Dietrich’s Dairy operations were discontinued and the family continued to own and operate DMP through 1998, at which point it was reorganized as an LLC (limited-liability company) with two large dairy cooperatives as equal partners with the family.

Starting in 1990, Tom Dietrich and DSP’s key management and processing staff began to develop DSP’s specialty food ingredients processing business while at DMP. Since 1998, DMP’s two older dairy processing facilities and a growing need to focus energies and staff on supporting the unpredictable milk marketing activities of the dairy cooperatives made it very difficult and expensive to service the growing needs of this specialty processing business.
DMP’s inability to adequately serve this market led to the formation of DSP in 2005. In many respects, DSP represents a logical evolution of the family’s role in the dairy and food ingredient spray drying industries.

In choosing a site and planning the DSP facility, we designed to be able to efficiently shift between or simultaneously process under organic and non-organic, kosher pareve, kosher dairy and non-kosher conditions. Secondly, we designed for the flexibility to efficiently and safely process an ever growing list of food allergens. Finally, we incorporated a control system to allow us to accomplish all this work with a minimum of staff, yet still be able to provide adequate documentation that all processing, cleaning and kosherizing was completed according to established protocols.

Kline Process Systems, Inc. (KPS) provided the design, equipment selection, process layout and automated process control systems for the DSP facility. (KPS was formed in 1990 and is jointly owned by Bob Kline and Tom Dietrich.) KPS provided a critical role in the development of these specialty processing capabilities for both DMP and DSP. In addition to creating the wireless process control environment for the facility, KPS staff created the ability for the OU to “remotely supervise” the processing and koshering activities.

DSP’s custom blending and spray drying capabilities include conventional and organic dairy powders, infant formula powders, sweetener powders, nutritional ingredients, soy powders, and meat, vegetable and dairy flavor powders. DSP can also produce conventional and organic fluid milk products and butter.

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