More than 100 years ago, farmer William Urschel, who grew gooseberries in the Midwest, designed the Gooseberry Snipper to trim both the stem and blossom end from a gooseberry, which was a popular crop at the time. That led to the launching of a machinery company in Valparaiso, IN, that would soon be known as Urschel Laboratories Inc.

“Doing that by hand was very labor-intensive,” said Rick Urschel, current president of the firm. “The machine did the work of 100 laborers.”

Today, Urschel Laboratories continues to design labor-saving machinery in the food industry. And while the fruit and vegetable sector accounts for the majority of its business, it operates in many different sectors, including dairy, meat and poultry, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, chemical, and other related fields that require precision size-reduction equipment. It has more than 50 different models of food-processing equipment, including slicers, dicers, shredders, processor milling equipment and other food-cutting machinery.

Urschel said the Gooseberry Snipper remained the company’s signature item into the 1920s, when it developed a dicing machine for the burgeoning canning industry. Michigan was ground zero for the canning industry, and Urschel’s close proximity allowed it to become a major manufacturer of that type of equipment. The company also followed trend lines when it developed its first vegetable TranSlicer for the developing fresh-cut business in the early 1990s.

Tony McCracken, a design engineer for the firm, said the TranSlicer, which has come out in many different models, has been the company’s top seller for the past two decades. It is used by fresh-cut processors from coast to coast. McCracken said the TranSlicer series has a model for almost any utilization, from a coin cut to a julienne cut.

Urschel added that the firm’s newest product, the E TranSlicer, incorporates many elements of the original design with new features that aid in sanitation of the equipment as well as makes it very adaptable, whether “it is being used by a small end-user that is processing 500 to 1,000 pounds per hour or a larger operation doing 12,000 to 16,000 pounds per hour.”

He said it is the sanitation aspect that has brought about the biggest changes in the fresh-cut equipment over the past 20 years.

The Urschel machines now use hinged and sliding access panels to offer full access to all key areas of the machine for better sanitation

The literature on the equipment reveals there is much innovation to aid in food-safety measures. For example, to further ease wash downs, surfaces are sloped. Sanitary design ensures that all mechanical components are separated from the food zone. Electrical cables are slightly raised off of the machine frame to simplify wash downs and alleviate trapped food particulates.

While the machines are constantly being updated and improved, Urschel said some of the same basic mechanisms that worked a generation ago still form the core of many of its most popular machines. He said the cutting wheel of the TranSlicer is the same as it was in 1995. And the potato chip slicer the company sells has remained virtually unchanged since 1956.

“The basic principle of cutting those potatoes for chips hasn’t changed,” he said.

McCracken added that while many companies do buy new machinery from time to time, “we also have a lot of customers that are using the same basic equipment that was installed in 1995.”

He said Urschel often retrofits old machinery with the newest gadgetry.

Urschel added that the firm manufacturers most of the components of the machines on site, which gives it greater quality control.

One big change that will be completed soon is the moving of the company to a new facility a few miles down the road. In 1958, Urschel moved to its current location and built a 25,000-square-foot facility. That facility has gone through 28 plant expansions in those 56 years (one every other year), and it now encompasses five acres and 232,000 square feet. But the facility has been outgrown again.

“We purchased 160 acres in the town down the road and we have taken one 17-acre corner of it and put up a 350,000-square-foot facility,” said the firm’s president and CEO, who is the fourth generation Urschel to run the firm. “We expect this property should last us for the next 100 years.”