Business Spotlight: Nothum Manufacturing Co.

Owner: Bob Nothum

Founded: 1971

Address: 631 S. Kansas Ave., Springfield, MO 65802

Phone: (800) 435-1297 or (417) 831-2816

Fax: (417) 866-4781

Web: www.nothum.com

Products: Food-processing systems

Employees: 25

2007 Revenue: $3 million

Nothum Manufacturing Co. knows its role in the food chain.

“We make chicken nugget machines,” quips Robert M. Nothum, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. “We really don’t have much to do with chicken nuggets, but people know what those are and understand what that is.”

Nothum Manufacturing designs and builds food-processing equipment that coats, cooks and freezes foods for plants that supply restaurants and hospitals, for instance, around the world.

“Grandpa started this in 1971,” Nothum says from his 631 S. Kansas Ave. office. “We made all kinds of stainless steel food-producing equipment. Whatever would come our way, we’d do it.”

Grandpa Robert G. Nothum Sr. is now semiretired. His son, Robert “Bob” G. Nothum Jr., president and CEO, and his grandson, Robert M. Nothum, vice president of sales and marketing, carry on the family business, which does business as Nothum Food Processing Systems.

Batter up

In the late 1990s, Nothum Manufacturing started focusing on a core product line that now includes machinery with names such as the Super Flex, the Versa Coat, the Batter Pro, the Charmarker and the Flex Drum preduster/breader, the product that started it all.

These machines essentially put breading or batter on a product such as chicken and then fry or cook it in a continuous manner. In some cases, the production lines – up to 60 feet long – can include freezers and even packaging.

Today, Nothum Manufacturing has more than 200 of the Flex Drum machines in companies such as Pilgrim’s Pride, a large Texas-based poultry processing company, Blount Seafood in Rhode Island and Apperts Food Service in Minnesota.

Apperts found Nothum through a trade show. This broad-line distributor uses Nothum equipment to apply breading to poultry, seafood and beef. According to Director of Processing Adrian Seguin, Apperts processes around 8 million pounds per year and grosses about $100 million in revenues.

“If you’ve ever eaten a Wendy’s home-style chicken strip – those go through at least one piece of our equipment,” Robert M. Nothum says.

Nothum explains that the FD-24 (or FD-40 – the number indicating the width of the belt moving chicken through the machine) can take a cut chicken strip, tumble it around and add batter, so it looks homemade rather than like a formed chicken nugget product.

The one-ton machines cost around $95,000. Depending on the size of the belt and the specific function, between 250 pounds and 8,500 pounds can move through a processor in an hour.

That higher volume is what attracted Garland, Texas-based Advance Food Co. to Nothum’s product line. Advance Food was handling about 1,100 pounds of chicken strips per hour.

“We raised our output up to 2,600 pounds per hour,” notes Derrick Jackson, director of maintenance for Advance Food, which supplies Wal-Mart stores.

Jackson says he also is impressed with the customer service provided by Nothum. “If I have a problem with one of their machines, they put a guy in a car,” he says. “You don’t get that from everybody in this business.”

Nothum Manufacturing has 25 full-time employees – up from a low of eight just a few years ago when a combination of events with customers and employees brought the company to “rock bottom,” Nothum says.

Now the company runs 10-hour shifts, four days a week in both the Springfield location and a plant in Lockwood, about 45 minutes northwest of town.

Nothum’s work force includes welders, designers and administrative support. All of Nothum’s products are patented, and there are two more pieces in development.

Food for thought

Nothum Manufacturing is not immune to the economic pressures on the food industry.

Revenues fell by $1 million in 2007 to $3 million. Nothum officials project between $3 million and $4 million in 2008 revenues.

But Nothum adds, “We’d like to be between $10 million and 12 million in the next five years or so.”

Word-of-mouth, the Internet and trade shows comprise most of Nothum’s marketing efforts.

The rising price of corn affects even large processors such as Tyson, Perdue and Pilgrim’s Pride – all customers or potential customers for Nothum products. But the same economy produced a weaker dollar, which has allowed for some expansion of Nothum internationally.

In the Kansas Expressway plant sit machines bound for Israel, Venezuela and the Netherlands. A potential customer from Canada is visiting to try out a piece of equipment.

Aside from the 12 lines of equipment Nothum produces, the company also has a full U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved test kitchen in which to run a complete production line. In fact, Nothum will occasionally complete processing for a client. It helps keep staff familiar with their equipment, Nothum says, and acts as another revenue source during slower production times.