Cereal filler: flaking and baking, malt-o-meal's Asheboro plant pours out enough crunchy stuff on a typical day to load a million bowls.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Not every company withers during economic downturns. Minneapolis-based Malt-O-Meal Co., which makes 10 of the nation's 50 best-selling cereal brands, has been bulking up production schedules, adding work shifts and building warehouses. In September, it opened a 350,000-square-foot factory in Asheboro.

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Most of its cereals mimic pricier brands--Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats and Frosted Flakes, to name two--so they're more attractive to shoppers when times are lean. Malt-O-Meal sells its products through major grocery chains and small-town stalwarts such as Piggly Wiggly, Galaxy, Family Dollar and Dollar General for substantially less than better-known labels, cutting costs partly by packaging its cereals in bags rather than boxes. "We're not just a copycat company, though," says Dale Ducommun, manager of the Asheboro plant. "We don't just produce cereals like Frosted Flakes but our own brands, too"--such as Blueberry Muffin Tops.

Three years ago, the company bought a factory in Asheboro that had been making Knorr dried soup. Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods conglomerate, had closed the plant in 2006, throwing 150 out of work. Malt-O-Meal spent more than $140 million renovating it, moving 8,000 dump-truck loads of dirt, installing 100 miles of wiring and adding 30 miles of pipe. About 80,000 lines of code were written to run its operations and administrative computers. "It's a huge investment, very high-tech," Ducommun says. State and local governments kicked in more than $5 million in potential incentives.

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Little of Unilever's equipment was adaptable, so Malt-O-Meal refitted...