Rutgers University Food Innovation Center

Bridgeton NJ Plant
The Rutgers Food Innovation Center is a unique business incubation and economic development accelerator program, which provides business and technology expertise to startup and established food companies in the mid-Atlantic region, and utilizes its outreach capacity to reach food and agribusinesses throughout the world. To that end they called upon GSA to design, oversee and operate a 23,000 sq ft food processing facility in southern NJ. The plant is fully inspected, USDA on site, FDA, ISO certified and capable of producing hundreds of different items. The concept of the facility as an incubator is to provide technical expertise, manpower, equipment, process techniques, refrigerated storage and operations, blast chilling and freezing, steam cooking, produce and fruit washing and processing, packaging and finished product storage for a multitude of clients.

To that end we needed to design a facility that could be all things to all people, a plant with versatility to change, morph, modify, and support different products. We created a dry process for bakery type items, a hot kitchen for hot process cooking, bottling sous vie, cook chill, etc.; a refrigerated process room for meats or produce or fruits where products could be shaped and packaged under refrigerated conditions with the ability to wash with large amounts of water for agricultural products; and packaging room with a HEPA filtered air supply to MAP, slice and bag, box and cup fill, and pack off a multitude of products.

Included in this fully was a fully operational test kitchen for product development; full working analytical and a micro labs; blast freezers & chillers; a mechanical space with a high pressure boiler, 25 hp 110 psi air compressor, a 600 MBH hot water system and a 2000 amp 480 volt electrical service; 3 loading berths; a maintenance shop and racked dry and finished product frozen and refrigerated storage.