Ab E Manufacturing, the commercial production arm of Ab E Discovery, held a groundbreaking ceremony May 10 to celebrate the start of construction on its headquarters in Waterloo, Wis.

The facility will be staffed by skilled production scientists and engineers and will specialize in providing manufacturing and scale-up solutions to help animal health and nutrition innovators bring bio-functional feed ingredients to market, according to an announcement. The project is supported by both the city of Waterloo and the state of Wisconsin.

“Novel discoveries require equally novel manufacturing and processing techniques, especially when it comes to bio-functional ingredients,” Ab E Manufacturing president Eric Salm said. “By making specialized processes like encapsulation more accessible, we can generate the high-quality product needed to make significant advancements in this space.”

The 25,000 sq. ft. building will house systems specially designed to maintain the functionality of sensitive biological ingredients throughout processing. Other features include a dedicated research and development (R&D) and quality laboratory and flexible layout for introducing new processes.

Ab E Manufacturing plans to offer its services to university researchers and businesses, delivering product and helping design processes on a variety of scales, the announcement said.

Specific capabilities include drying and fluid bed processing, encapsulation, egg processing, pasteurization, blending and packaging.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. is supporting the project by awarding up to $250,000 in state income tax credits over the next four years (contingent upon the number of jobs created during that time).

Ab E Manufacturing is focused on process development and manufacturing of early-stage bio-functional feed ingredients. To accelerate market entry, Ab E Manufacturing outfits forward-thinking businesses with the capacity, resources and flexible systems needed to get from R&D to scale. The company's production scientists integrate multiple phases of front-end development, engineering and implementing processes that ensure optimal quality and consistency throughout.