Great Lakes Cheese Breaks Ground on $500 Million New York Plant
Great Lakes Cheese broke ground earlier this week on a $500 million state-of-the-art manufacturing and packaging plant. Located in Franklinville, N.Y., the nearly 500,000-square-foot facility is expected to be completed in early 2024. The plant will add 200 new jobs while offering jobs to the 226 workers at the current Cuba site.
“Our employee-owners are our greatest asset,” says owner Kurt Epprecht in a press release. “The Epprecht family and Board of Directors are thrilled to have found the location and community needed to support such a major investment in nearby Franklinville. We look forward to building one of the country’s premier cheese manufacturing and packaging facilities for our current employee-owners and the hundreds who will join the Great Lakes Cheese family.”
The new plant expects to double its milk purchase to 4 million gallons a day and double its output. Great Lakes Cheese purchased the Cuba plant in 1993 from Empire Cheese company.
Great Lakes Cheese supplies 25% of all the packaged cheese consumed in America. The company serves the nation’s retailers and foodservice operations as a manufacturer and packer of natural and process bulk, shredded, and sliced cheeses. Utilizing their eight state-of-the-art plants, products are distributed coast-to-coast.
Dan Zagzebski, Great Lakes Cheese president and CEO, says the company will use the “combination of innovative technology and the best people to make a high-quality cheese for our customers.”
Matt Wilkinson, vice president of Great Lakes Cheese, says he never thought it would be so hard to find a spot to spend $500 million.
“We looked at 100 different locations for the plant in Allegany and Cattaraugus counties in order to allow those employees to continue to live in this area,” he says.
The Epprecht family was dedicated to ensuring the employees, families and farmers connected to the company would be served by the project going forward.
With new construction underway, company officials said they have no concrete plans for the current site south of Cuba, as they are still looking for potential users.
