Spot & Tango is expanding its manufacturing facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S., investing more than $20 million to increase production of its UnKibble dog food.
The company is enlarging the plant from 70,000 to 90,000 square feet and doubling production capacity for UnKibble, a shelf-stable dog food. The expansion will create about 50 jobs across production, quality, maintenance, logistics and warehouse operations.
Spot & Tango took over the expanded space June 1 and expects the facility to be fully operational by July.
UnKibble has been the company's primary growth driver for several years, with volumes growing more than 50% year over year, according to Dylan Munro, co-founder and COO of Spot & Tango. The expansion will raise maximum capacity from about 5,000 tons per year to about 10,000 tons, he said.
Munro said the added footprint will let the company increase its number of production lines rather than simply expand storage.
"With this expanded footprint, we will relocate our warehouse space, which will allow us to double the number of lines in our production space," he said.
He described the production method as a multistep process. "UnKibble starts with only real, fresh, human-grade ingredients that are blended together, formed into pellets, and then put through our trade-secret Fresh Dry process," Munro said. "The output is a cooked, shelf-stable food that provides the health benefits of fresh food with the convenience of kibble."
UnKibble is developed by veterinary nutritionists, and meal plans are personalized based on a dog's size, age, breed and activity level. Spot & Tango has served more than 150 million meals to date and earlier this year launched UnKibble in Canada through a direct-to-consumer model.
