C. E. ROGERS COMPANY HISTORY: A TIME LINE

1830 - 1880
The C. E. Rogers Company history begins in the 1830's with Charles T. Rogers working in the Northville, Michigan area, developing methods to condense milk. Between 1850 and 1860 Charles T. Rogers, his son Charles E. Rogers and J.W. Jewel successfully develop a means to condense milk and other milk products such as sweetened condensed milk for use in the ice cream and confectionery industries. In the early 1870's these three men enter their products and processes in the World's Dairy Exposition in New Orleans and win first place. This enables them to receive financing to establish a manufacturing facility in Detroit, Michigan.

1880 - 1920
In 1883 the C. E. Rogers company is incorporated in the state of Michigan. During this time period the company further develops the process of condensing milk products and adds heat-drying technology to their product mix. The primary product line is continuous or "batch" type vacuum pans and wood staved, tin lined milk dryers.

1920 - 1946
In 1926 a new plant is built on Witt Street in Detroit where the C. E. Rogers Company will remain until 1970. The C. E. Rogers Company adds other product lines but most are short lived, and the Company's core business remains in milk concentration and spray drying. As the dairy industry expands with the country's growing population, the systems that C. E. Rogers offers expand in process capabilities and product capacity. During this time Charles E. Rogers' son, Elmer Donald Rogers, becomes president upon his father's death. During the World War II years, C. E. Rogers was given a high priority status to obtain raw materials (stainless and carbon steels) for the fabrication of small product spray dryers designed to dry eggs for shipment overseas to American servicemen. C. E. Rogers did extensive research and was very successful in formulating a process to dry whole egg, egg yolk and albumen (egg white).

1946 - 1970
The country's post-war growth leads the C. E. Rogers Company into larger and more diverse designs. Arthur A. Rogers becomes president when E. D. Rogers passes away in 1954. Evaporator and spray dryer designs become capable of even larger processing capabilities and become more energy efficient. The first falling film evaporators and vertical or tower spray dryers are introduced. Cheese whey processing becomes a reality. C. E. Rogers purchases two competitors; the Henszey Company of Watertown, Wisconsin in 1963 and the Blaw-Knox Dairy Division (formerly located in Mora, MN) of Buffalo, New York in 1968. In 1970 the C. E. Rogers Company, looking to leave the Detroit area due to increased labor demands and the inability to reach the heartland of America's dairy producers and processors, moves to Mora, Minnesota. The availability of skilled workers and technical people understanding evaporator and spray dryer design (former employees of Blaw-Knox) was a critical factor for the move to Mora, MN.

1971 - 1982
Evaporator and spray dryer designs continue to become larger and more energy efficient. European companies from Denmark and Holland make competition within the industry very intense. Two substantial developments come out of the 1970's for C. E. Rogers. One was the successful design and development of a two-stage non-hygroscopic whey spray drying system which produces unsurpassed powder. The other was a large capacity evaporator / spray dryer system with the ability to process 100,000 pounds of skim milk into 9,000 pounds of powder in one hour.

In 1980 C. E. Rogers commissions its first free standing large capacity evaporator and vertical spray drying system which can directly compete with any and all European designs. In 1982 Arthur A. Rogers passes away and his son Howard J. Rogers is elected the fifth president of the C. E. Rogers Company.

1983 - 1997
In 1984 the first Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MVR) Evaporator System is commissioned. This design ushers in the age of non-steam based evaporator concentration. From 1984 through 1993 the country's milk producing regions substantially shift from the Midwest to the West and Southwest. Processing plants continue to increase in size. In 1993 C. E. Rogers is contracted to supply an evaporator and spray dryer system to a new plant in California, with a milk intake of 3 million pounds per day. This evaporator is sized to handle 140,000 LB/hr of skim milk and the dryer to produce 13,000 LB/hr of skim milk powder. Along with this equipment, C. E. Rogers is also awarded a contract for a MVR evaporator designed specifically to condense the plant effluent or wastewater. To our knowledge this was the first plant in the country to use this technology in wastewater treatment. During 1996 & 1997, C. E. Rogers has international sales in Australia, Peru, Chile, Canada and Mexico.

1997- Present
On the heel of developing a process for successful airplane de-icer concentration in the late 90's, C.E. Rogers was back to work in its core business of dairy process systems when it was awarded the contracts to supply several very large volume milk processing plants in Tempe, AZ, and Carlisle, PA with large capacity evaporators and spray dryers.

It was in 1999, however, that C.E. Rogers was awarded probably its most important contract in the last 50 years as Agri-Mark/Cabot, a cheddar cheese manufacturer in the eastern US built a whey processing facility in Middlebury, VT. C.E. Rogers supplied a protein dryer for whey protein concentrate-80 powder and another drying system designed specifically to dry non-hygroscopic whey permeate powder.

Recently many cheese makers have realized the value of extracting protein (via membrane filtration) from the whey they produce which has become a very popular food and nutritional supplement. The problem for cheese makers was producing permeate while making protein is unavoidable, and processing it in any form is extremely challenging. Until recently it was thought that permeate alone was marketable at best as only an animal feed. This changed in 1999.

The C.E. Rogers Company is capable of offering many types of evaporation and spray drying systems, but recently our expertise in the field of spray drying truly non-hygroscopic powder has come to the forefront. Our proficiency lies directly in the process requirements required to successfully spray dry whey or permeate powders, non-hygroscopically, via a multiple stage spray drying system. C.E. Rogers began development of this system in the 1970's when whey was still spread on fields or dumped down the drain and after several attempts and some major struggles we mastered the pre-conditioning aspect of the process (which is extremely critical) prior to the second stage of the drying system. With help from some farsighted processors we have been able to develop a system that can produce a non-hygroscopic powder which will retain its granular fluidity not only after exposure to normal ambient humidity levels, but also when the relative humidity reaches the upper 90's%. Our process has been proven while processing virtually every type of cheese whey, and most recently we have achieved tremendous success processing whey permeate powder.

To our knowledge the Agri-Mark/Cabot facility was the first plant in the country to build a spray dryer dedicated solely to the process of food grade, whey permeate powder. This plant's success using the process equipment supplied by C.E. Rogers has been unequaled in the industry.

In 2002 C.E. Rogers commissioned two of the largest volume processing systems in their history. The largest non-hygroscopic whey spray dryer we have designed to date was installed in Waverly, NY producing 9,000 pounds per hour of powder. An evaporator and spray dryer tandem was also commissioned that year in Portales, NM processing the largest milk capacity of any C.E. Rogers systems in operation. The evaporator concentrates 160,000 pounds per hour of skim milk and the dryer is designed to produce 15,000 pounds per hour of dried product. In 2003 we commissioned our largest MVR evaporator utilizing a turbofan compressor. Installed at a swiss cheese plant in Millersburg, OH the system concentrates 100,000 pounds per hour of whey while compressing vapors by means of a 900-hp turbofan.

Today, in the fifth generation of Rogers' family ownership and guidance, C. E. Rogers continues its tradition of quality, craftsmanship and engineering excellence in the design and fabrication of evaporators and spray drying systems for varied applications.

The long and colorful history of the C. E. Rogers Company continues to provide a foundation for a bright future - a future of providing high capacity, energy efficient evaporation and spray drying solutions to the food processing and wastewater treatment industries.