A Minnesota company is finding market success using recaptured dairy ingredients for animal and human nutrition.
After operating as Milk Specialties Global, the company, based in Eden Prairie, rebranded in 2024 and is now known as Actus Nutrition. Actus Nutrition was an early pioneer in capturing “waste” whey from cheesemaking and drying it for nutrition products.
The company’s roots are in milk replacers for young livestock, but over time, it expanded into other feed products. Today, Actus Nutrition offers a wide-ranging portfolio of ingredients and private label services for customers in the human nutrition and animal feed sectors.
Actus Nutrition’s core focus for animals is nutritional products for dairy cattle. In addition to manufacturing milk replacers for a variety of animal species, Actus is a leading manufacturer of rumen-bypass fats, precision amino acid products, and other health and wellness products. The rumen is one of four stomach compartments unique to ruminant animals, like cows.
Bypass products exit through the rumen and are digested in the small intestine, so more metabolizable nutrients are available to meet the animal’s nutritional needs. This increase in nutrient absorption leads to better animal performance and can reduce the need for high levels of crude protein in the diet.
Work from AURI’s coproducts team in Waseca aided early product development for one of Actus Nutrition’s successful dairy bypass ingredients.
AURI initially helped Actus Nutrition develop a bypass lysine supplement. The company also saw interest in a bypass methionine supplement, which led to further product development.
“That’s where we focused our efforts,” says AURI senior scientist, coproducts Alan Doering. “We helped Actus Nutrition develop a very similar product to what had been done with lysine, but centered on developing a methionine-based micro pellet.”
RPMet™ Methionine Supplement is designed to increase protein yields and fat content in milk from dairy cows. RPMet is intended to deliver methionine directly into the cow’s small intestine.
“This results in increased milk components and larger milk checks for dairy farmers,” says Ben Kroeplin, Actus Nutrition marketing director. “In addition to improving milk component output, amino acid supplements also significantly improve reproductive rates in cattle.”
Kroeplin says RPMet has been rapidly growing its North American market share since the product was launched two years ago. He says it is among the highest-performing rumen-bypass amino acid supplements on the market, and its efficacy is backed by university research. RPMet is also produced in America, which Kroeplin says is an attractive feature to many customers.
“AURI lent its expertise and resources to help get our first-generation amino acid supplement off the ground,” Kroeplin explains. “We took the learnings from that product to develop our second-generation product, which is becoming a smashing success.”
“Our goal is to see the companies and the clients that we work with progress their product and make it to commercialization, which Actus Nutrition has done,” Doering says. “And they continue to grow. They utilize and add value to dairy products, so they’re going full circle using dairy products to support the dairy industry.”
While RPMet is already achieving success in the market, Kroeplin says there is still room for growth.
“Amino acid balancing is rapidly growing in popularity with dairy nutritionists as a way to maximize milk component output and subsequent profits for dairy operations,” Kroeplin explains. “Many farms don’t currently balance for amino acids, so the market for supplements continues to expand.”