Innovation: Our Processes

Innovation isn’t just a cultural tenet at Sargento, it’s part of who we are and who we’ve always been as a company.

The mindset traces back to our founder, Leonard A. Gentine. While many remember Leonard for his pioneering ideas in cheese, his approach to innovation was shaped just as much by his approach to equipment and processes.

With a background in machining, Leonard looked at challenges with an engineering lens. His hands-on ingenuity showed up early in Sargento history. Long before Sargento became a leader in natural cheese, Leonard was dreaming and building machinery himself.

In the Plymouth Cheese Counter, Leonard built a wax tank to dip wedges of cheese, a wire cutter to cut the cheese, and developed his own machinery for automated packaging for his cheese gift boxes. Later on, as Leonard expanded into shredded cheese, he developed an automated shredding machine using a pasta cutter — and was the first in the United States to develop gas flushing for a sealable food package.

"My grandfather was a true entrepreneur. He liked to tinker a lot, so when he started Sargento, he wanted to bring a retail-ready package to consumers," Sargento CEO Louie Gentine said “He created the first modified-atmosphere package to allow cheese to be sold and marketed through retailers. It was his tinkering mindset of always wanting to come up with the next thing that resulted in a lot of firsts for Sargento.”

More than 70 years later, that same spirit continues to drive us. This year, Sargento was named to Fast Company’s 2026 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, a global recognition that reflects not just what we create, but how we create it.

While new products are often what people see, innovation is also happening behind the scenes through the machinery, processes, and continuous improvement projects that make our operations smarter, safer, and more efficient.

For Sargento Principal Engineer Aaron Strand, innovation is in the process. After more than three decades at Sargento, his work in machine development has contributed to dozens of improvements and to numerous patents that protect and advance how we operate.

“The key to our success is in how Sargento forms teams for innovation projects,” Aaron said. “We bring together subject matter experts, each working in their element toward a shared goal. No one cares who gets the credit. When that happens, the results are exponential every time. That’s when innovation happens.”

Some of Sargento’s most impactful innovations began with a simple question: How can we make this better?

In the early 1990’s, that question led to the development of our first horizontal bagging systems. Over several years, teams refined and improved how bags were opened, filled, and sealed.

“It took 4 years of development from the time we purchased that first machine until we shipped two new Horizontal Baggers to Plymouth, but those baggers hit the ground running and are still in Plymouth and still outperforming our competition,” Aaron said.

Those early improvements didn’t just solve immediate challenges; they built a foundation of knowledge. As teams learned and improved, that expertise carried forward into future innovations, helping Sargento develop new technologies and push existing equipment even further.

“By making our machines and processes run faster, safer, and more reliable, we are making our Production Employees’ jobs easier, safer, and more efficient,” Aaron said. “Machine Innovation is about making jobs better for everyone and then protecting those improvements with Patents or Trade Secrets whenever possible.”

That pattern continues today. Whether it’s enhancing packaging systems, optimizing machine performance, or developing entirely new approaches, each improvement builds on the last, creating a cycle of progress.

From advancements in automated stick lines to improvements in packaging systems that increase line speed, these innovations help ensure our operations run smoothly. Other breakthroughs have focused on efficiency and sustainability, including machine designs that significantly reduce resource usage while maintaining high performance.

That mindset of solving real problems, working together, and continuously improving is what drives innovation across Sargento. It’s the same mindset Leonard Gentine brought to his early machines — an instinct to build, improve, and push forward — that continues to shape how we work today and into the future.