The American Feed Industry Association is now accepting applications for the 2019 Feed Facility of the Year (FFY) program. Sponsored by AFIA and Feedstuffs, the FFY program is designed to be a world-class benchmarking program for the animal food industry. It recognizes overall excellence in feed manufacturing operations, emphasizing safety, quality, regulatory compliance, employee development and overall operating efficiencies.

“The Feed Facility of the Year benchmarking program gives facilities insight on how they compare to other similar facilities,” said Gary Huddleston, AFIA’s director of feed manufacturing and regulatory affairs. “This information can’t be found anywhere else and is a valuable tool in improving a facility's performance.”

AFIA and Feedstuffs redesigned the former Feed Mill of the Year award program in 2016 to be more industry-inclusive and expanded it in 2017 to include non-AFIA members in the benchmarking portion of the program. Non-members are ineligible for the awards portion of the program, but they receive all the benefits of the benchmarking program.

To keep benchmarking information relative, four industry categories, with category-specific applications, are considered: commercial dry feed, integrator, liquid feed and premix/ingredient manufacturing. AFIA and Feedstuffs will select winners in each category and among those, will name an overall FFY winner. The winners will be recognized at the 2020 International Production & Processing Expo, being held Jan. 28-30, in Atlanta, Ga.

Applications are due by Sept. 6, along with an application fee of $100 for AFIA members and $250 for non-members.