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CDR works with manufacturers, product buyers/users, or manufacturers and their customers to achieve the desired product flavor, performance, and/or functionality for the chosen application. This is achieved through combinations of various efforts, including troubleshooting, product flavor and performance evaluation, cheese acceptability improvement, new product development, determining the product manufacturer best suited to provide the desired product, cheese and dairy product education, or general technical assistance and consultations.

Formulation

Whether you have a dairy product or cheese you want to make or need ideas, CDR staff have a library of formulations available to get you started. Staff can also help you make the formula unique to your company.

Prototyping

CDR staff have the expertise in the processes and ingredients needed to develop the desired flavor and texture for your product, whether its cheese, cultured products, beverages, or any dairy-based product. Let us help you create a prototype for testing and sensory feedback before going the next step in product formulation.

Product Trials

Utilize the expertise of CDR’s licensed cheesemakers and dairy product experts to experiment using small-scale manufacturing and processing equipment until you have the product that meets your needs.

CDR’s licensed cheese pilot plant is located within the University of Wisconsin’s Babcock Hall and allows for flexibility in all aspects of the cheese manufacturing process. The CDR team works with natural, processed, cold pack, cream cheese, and butter, and has the capability and experience to utilize breed and specie specific milk supplies or provide milk through the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant. Staff work with customers to determine their goals and objectives and then set up, design, and carry out cheese trials. Contracted trials may involve testing ingredients, developing new cheeses, optimizing flavor and performance in existing cheeses, or simply finding answers to your questions.

CDR’s processing pilot plant offers capabilities involving fractionation, concentration or drying of milk, whey and whey proteins. Processing staff members have decades of industry experience in processing milk and whey products and are available as a consultant to dairy companies, equipment companies, researchers, buyers and end users of dairy products.

Scale Up

Once you finalize your product formula, and the trials are complete, CDR has the expertise to help you scale up your project either at CDR or in your own processing facility. We have staff who will walk with you every step of the manufacturing process, ensuring that what you created in the pilot plant will also scale up for commercial production, providing troubleshooting throughout the process.

Troubleshooting

CDR serves as a resource for cheese manufacturers, buyers, brokers, converters, marketers and end customers in industrial, food service and retail channels. If you are experiencing an issue with your cheese or dairy product, contact the experts at CDR. With more than 400 years of combined experience, the staff at CDR has the expertise to help you find a solution. We offer analytical and microbial analysis of your cheese at a cost and are also available to discuss solutions. In addition to basic compositional, chemical and microbiological testing we offer functionality testing through our sensory program.

Whether you are looking to optimize flavor and performance or simply find an answer to a burning question, the CDR cheese group is available to help, via a quick question over the phone or a plant visit.

Plant Visits

CDR staff are available to come to your plant for on-site help or to do a plant walk through for unbiased observations related to plant efficiency, processes, or simply a fresh perspective.

“We started out with just an idea and I wasn't sure how to get a means to the end. But CDR helped me bring my cheese to production.”