RONAN — A food processing facility in Western Montana is ramping up production to turn locally-grown produce into cafeteria meals with a new automated bottling system.
Mission West, a Montana processing facility, has upgraded its production of Montana Marinara with new equipment that allows it to send more sauce to school lunchrooms statewide. The facility has been operating for five years, turning local vegetables into school-ready marinara sauce.
"In years past, this was all done manually," said Travis White, operations manager with Mission West.
The previous process involved one person filling bags, and the company sold the product as a frozen item, which created challenges for schools that lacked adequate freezer space for storing large quantities of marinara.
A recent grant helped Mission West solve that storage problem by investing in new automated equipment that bottles shelf-stable sauce instead of frozen products.
"With this new line because number one, it's hands off, it's safer for the employee, but now we're doing four units at a time, which are bigger units than we've had in the past," White said. "So it's just more per cycle, more cycles per day."
Go behind the scenes of Mission West:
The facility's new automated system prioritizes both worker safety and increased production without eliminating jobs. The upgrade specifically targets redundant labor tasks that posed safety risks to employees.
"We wanted to eliminate redundant labor where one person had to put hands on a very hot valve that could potentially slash and burn an employee," White said. "Now it just automatically fills four bottles at a time continuously."
Nearly every ingredient in the marinara sauce is sourced locally, allowing Montana farmers to sell their vegetables at premium prices while keeping money within the local economy.
"Sometimes you'll never see the people that are providing your crop to you, and you'll never see the people that consume your product," White said. "So this is nice. This is local money being kept here in the form of purchased ingredients and sold product. You know, it's nice to see the whole thing stay full circle in our local area."
Mission West plans to send out over 1,000 cases by the beginning of next year from its Ronan facility.
