MONTICELLO — After 44 years of service to the cheese industry, Freshpack’s Andy Hendrickson hung up his hair net and coat last month.

Hendrickson, who started working in a cheese plant during college in 1977 has seen every side of the business from unloading milk trucks, being on the plant floor and ultimately into management where he found he had a gift for supply-chain, operations, data and procurement.

Hendrickson spent 2005 — 2014 at Emmi Roth, then Roth Käse, and more recently he was reunited with some of his former Emmi Roth colleagues who lured him out of his first attempt at retirement in 2014 to join the packaging experts at Freshpack in Monticello, WI.

The accolades surrounding Andy’s contributions to the industry all have a common theme — he genuinely made everyone around him smarter and better.

“His competence made all of us more competent,” said a former boss from Roth Käse, Jim Natzke. “He was often the smartest guy in the room but didn’t shout it. He had a big impact in a quiet way.”

“Andy has a code he lives by,” said Todd Kriebs president of Freshpack, “He does what he says he’s going to and expects the same of others.”

Andy’s expertise lies in leveraging data to make smart decisions. “I’ve always been able to clean up issues with inventory and forecasting with the right data,” Hendrickson says. 

Now that he’s retired, Andy and his wife will be hitting the road for some overdue traveling and adventure. 

While Andy will be leaving the dairy industry, his impact and the lessons he left behind will continue to serve the next generation of dairy leaders.