Axium Foods, known best for private-label, corn-based snacks, launches its own brand of enhanced-nutrition tortilla chips of a different color, Mystic Harvest Purple Corn Tortilla Chips. Loaded with healthful antioxidants, the chips are not only eye-catching, they have a tasty flavor and crunch. 

Well, the change of season brings with it many meetings, seminars, expos and other baking and snack activities that rain down like leaves. 

Axium Foods’ 130,000-sq.-ft, corn-based snacks operation in South Beloit, Ill., has expanded several times, thanks in part to the success of the many private-label products it packs and products it copacks. It’s also launching its own line of Mystic Harvest purple tortilla chips, which contain powerful antioxidants. Outfitted with seven highly flexible production lines, Axium produces 150 different stock-keeping units of snacks each week.

Serving a substantial portion of the Southeast, including the Five Guys hamburger restaurant chain, Masada Bakery has a deep commitment to customer service, quality standards and an ability to flex with a major growth curve in a tough economy. It’s for these and other reasons that we named it our 2012 Wholesale Baker of the Year.

I recently read about how Price Chopper supermarkets is celebrating its 20th year of baking fresh, New York-style bagels and bialys daily, in-store.

Masada Bakery’s 100,000-sq.-ft. bakery operation in Norcross, Ga., continues to grow, even in a slumping economy, thanks in part to the dramatic success of several customers. 

Not many things these days can truly be called “something new under the sun.” But Frito-Lay North America’s snack-processing plant in Casa Grande, Ariz. is one of them. Opened in 1984, the plant is possibly the most sustainable facility of its kind in the U.S. Combining sustainability for the future, a learning site and snack production, the facility currently serves a seven-state snack distribution network on a sprawling 280 acres in the Sonoran Desert. Occupying 170,000 sq. ft. of total space, with 160,000 sq. ft. under one roof, the Casa Grande plant is part of Frito-Lay’s

Visiting what’s considered this country’s most sustainable production operation—Frito-Lay North America’s Casa Grande snack food plant—I was impressed, to say the least, by such a progressive place.

Chipping in for a “greener” future, Frito-Lay North America’s snack manufacturing facility in Casa Grande, Ariz., is the company’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold snack unit—a remarkable achievement in its own right. But the plant, which Frito-Lay calls its Near Net Zero project showcase, is also the result of a highly ambitious sustainability project that took the location “off the grids,” running primarily on renewable energy sources and recycled water, while producing zero landfill waste. The plant could be the most sustainable food production facility of its kind in the U.S.