Did you know that the United States is the second largest hog producer in the world at 60 million hogs raised annually? Only China, at 466 million, leads the U.S. Third is Brazil with 33 million hogs.

The U.S. ships over 4 billion pounds of pork products annually to foreign markets with a value of $4.78 billion dollars to the U.S. economy.

CTB Inc., headquartered in Milford, Ind., has been selling equipment to the pig industry since its founding in the 1950s. After several acquisitions of companies manufacturing various types of pig production equipment, CTB saw in 2007 the need for a more consolidated approach to providing the company’s innovative and effective equipment to serve this growing and important agriculture market.

The company formed PigTek at that time as a division of CTB Inc., a leading global designer, manufacturer and marketer of systems and solutions for the poultry, pig, egg production, and grain industries. With growth and the need to increase U.S. manufacturing and logistics space for PigTek, CTB Inc. President and CEO Victor Mancinelli announced the acquisition of the recently vacated 125,000 square feet Royal Outdoor Products building in Milford.

According to George Murdoch, managing director of the PigTek group, the Milford facility will become the U.S. home office for the group and will not only be a manufacturing facility, but will include product showrooms and customer training facilities. Products currently manufactured at PigTek’s facilities in Germany and the Netherlands will now also be produced in the U.S.

Dan Brown, chairman of the Milford Redevelopment Commission and a board member of KEDCo, applauded this move. “CTB Inc. is not only an important employer but a valued community member.”

CTB. Inc. was one of the first six companies inducted by KEDCo into the Kosciusko County Entrepreneur and Innovation Hall of Fame.