Gerber Baby Products

Fremont, MI | Website

Client Challenge

As the world leader in baby food products, Gerber is sold in 80 countries around the world. Founded in Fremont, Michigan, in 1927 and still headquartered there, Gerber produces over 190 products, maintaining a market share in the United States alone of 83%. When it came to special water treatment needs, Gerber came to Besco Commercial. Gerber was in need of a carbon backwash filter for chlorine and organic removal. This system was to be installed in their Food Research wing. Gerber specified that it had to have the ability to be steam sanitized at up to 165 degrees.

Besco Solution

When working with its international customers, Besco realizes that not only do the application specifications need to be met, but the installation must seamlessly interface with other internal systems and be designed for the utmost safety of the customer’s workforce. This system was designed with special safeguards to do just that.

To solve Gerber Baby Products’ needs, Besco designed and built a stainless steel system with high-temperature solenoid valves, face-piping and a PLC controller that can be monitored and controlled from the customer’s BMS system. Since this system required extensive programming, Besco outsourced a programmer from Texas to write custom code for this application to ensure that all functions interface with the current operating system at Gerber.

In addition, when dealing with high temperatures such as those required here, many safeguards were built into the system to prevent injury in case of a failure. These safeguards were designed and customized by Besco Commercial in a redundant fashion so that in the event of a steam leak, the system would automatically shut itself down.