Formula optimization
Build smarter pet food recipes with multi-step formulation
How BESTMIX optimizes your kibble base, extrusion, coating, and packaging steps as one recipe, not four.
Most formulation tools treat each step of your pet food line as a separate recipe. Your nutritionist designs the kibble base. Someone else handles the coating. The slurry layer lives in another spreadsheet. By the time the formula reaches the line, it's been touched four times and the numbers don't quite tie out.
BESTMIX handles your whole pet food production chain as a single recipe with sub recipes per step. Base, extrusion, coating, drying, packaging. Each step has its own constraints, its own ingredients, its own yield model. They share one nutrient calculation. They roll up to one consolidated composition. The formula your nutritionist approves is the same formula your line actually runs.
What BESTMIX does that most formulation tools don't
Most legacy tools force a tradeoff. You can model your production line in multiple steps, or you can keep the full nutrient matrix that calculates how each ingredient contributes to your finished product. You usually can't have both at once.
BESTMIX gives you both. The full multilevel recipe structure (base + extrusion + coating + drying + packaging, each with its own sub recipe) and the nutrient calculation that rolls everything up. Per-step constraints. Per-step evaporation. Drag-and-drop ingredients between steps as your line changes. A single consolidated composition view that shows you exactly what's in the bag.
What this looks like in pet food
Dry kibble: base, extrusion, coating
Build your base recipe with the dry ingredients: corn, chicken meal, brewers rice, soybean meal, vit/min premix. Add the extrusion step that takes the base and adds water, with a negative ingoing weight constraint so the system models the evaporation that happens in the cook. Add the coating step that takes the extrusion output and adds poultry fat and palatant. Constraints at every step. The consolidated composition view rolls all three steps up into one finished-product view. Optimize the whole chain at once.
Wet and canned: slurry and retort
Build your slurry composition with fresh meat, broth, gravy. Set per-ingredient rehydration factors so the post-water declaration percentages (QUID) calculate correctly. Add the retort step. The system models moisture loss and rehydration at the ingredient level and the step level, so your finished product nutrient values are accurate, not estimated from the dry side.
Dehydrated treats: pre-drying, drying, packaging
Build the pre-drying recipe with your fresh ingredients. Add the drying step with the % evaporated column visible per ingredient. Yield-adjusted cost calculates automatically based on the production parameters: rounding factor, threshold, evaporation factor. Your formulator sees what the bag actually contains, not what was loaded into the line.
Moisture and evaporation, modeled at every step
Pet food loses moisture in different places: extrusion, drying, coating, packaging. Most tools handle this with a single global yield factor at the recipe level. BESTMIX lets you set evaporation per ingredient AND per step. Fresh meat in your slurry evaporates differently than corn in your base. The % evaporated column shows exactly what's coming out of each step.
This matters for two reasons. First, your label nutrient values stay accurate because the system knows what the finished product actually contains. PFLM 2029 (and your customers' QA teams) will catch any label that's off because of bad moisture modeling. Second, your finished product cost reflects yield reality, not theoretical weight, so your pricing and margins are right.
Why this matters for your operation
Three real consequences of single-layer formulation tools that pet food teams feel weekly:
• Supplier changes cascade by hand. When your chicken meal supplier changes spec, you update the base. Then you check the extrusion step. Then you confirm the coating still hits target moisture. Then you regenerate the spec sheet. Single-layer tools force this manually. BESTMIX cascades the change through every sub-recipe automatically, and the deviation report tells you which finished products fell out of spec.
• Label values that don't match the bag. If your tool calculates nutrients without modeling per-step evaporation, the label and the finished product drift apart. Your customers' QA teams notice. The new PFLM 2029 panel will require accurate yield-adjusted values.
• Reformulation costs from one sub-recipe change. When you update a premix or a base, single-layer tools require you to rebuild every parent recipe that uses it. BESTMIX propagates the change to every parent automatically. One change, every dependent recipe updates, and the audit trail shows you exactly what moved.
Where Multiblend and Procision fit alongside multi-step formulation
| Multiblend | Procision |
| Portfolio reoptimization across many recipes at once. When a shared ingredient like chicken meal moves in price, every recipe that uses it reoptimizes simultaneously within your approved ranges, and you get a consolidated purchase plan. | Lot-level precision for individual production orders. Each production run optimizes against the actual lot of ingredients in the tank using NIR or lab data, not against averages. Especially valuable for fresh, wet, and by-product-heavy formulations. |
Multi-step structures a single recipe. Multiblend optimizes a portfolio. Procision adjusts every production run to actual ingredient reality. The three layers work together when you have all of them.
Formulate for what ends up in the bag
See how multi-step formulation can help you account for what happens across extrusion, drying, coating and other production steps, while balancing nutrition, quality and cost.
FAQ
Find quick answers to the most common questions
Yes. BESTMIX supports multi-step formulation within a single recipe. You can model meat preparation, extrusion, coating, slurry preparation, drying, and other production stages, each with its own constraints and optimization settings.
A consolidated view rolls up ingredients and nutrients across every step, while allowing you to optimize individual process stages independently. Ingredients can be moved between steps as processes evolve, and constraints can be managed at both step and recipe level.
For pet food manufacturers, this is especially valuable because rehydration, extrusion, coatings, and inclusions often occur at different stages of production. Instead of only seeing the finished product, you can identify exactly where issues such as moisture variation, nutrient losses, or cost changes originate within the process.
BESTMIX lets you set evaporation per ingredient and per production step, so moisture loss can be modeled across extrusion, drying, coating and other stages. The system reflects these changes in the finished product composition, helping keep nutrient values and yield-adjusted costs accurate.
When an ingredient or sub-recipe changes, BESTMIX automatically updates the recipes that depend on it. The deviation report shows which finished products may fall outside specification, while the audit trail keeps track of what changed.
Yes. BESTMIX keeps the individual production steps and their constraints within a multilevel recipe structure while rolling the nutrient calculations into one consolidated composition. This gives you a finished-product view across all production steps.
This page answers the questions that most often influence a decision. Find answers to any additional questions in our FAQ.
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