Where is chobani factory

Before any milk is unloaded the company tests it for antibiotics and temperature it must be below 45 F. It can take about 2.

Once tests are complete and quality is checked, the raw milk is pumped through a filter into ,gallon tanks in the pasteurization room and kept at 45 degrees. The milk is stored up to 72 hours, but ideally it is used within 24 hours. Inside the tanks propellers circulate the milk to prevent the cream from separating. The raw milk is then heated to degrees and put through a separator that separates the cream from the 0.

The milk is then HTST pasteurized by heating it to an even higher temperature and filtered to remove any impurities. The pasteurized milk is pumped to the maturation room where it begins its transformation into yogurt. The company mixes warm skim milk with its proprietary mother culture and probiotics. Once combined, the agitator is turned off and the mixture is left to mature for about 10 hours. As the pH goes down, the acid goes up, and the mixture turns into curds and whey.

Chobani uses three pounds of milk to make one cup of its Greek yogurt. Once straining is complete, the yogurt is cooled to 60 degrees, which slows the fermentation process and prevents sour yogurt.

In its Core line, the nonfat fruit-on-the-bottom strawberry contains calories, 12 grams of protein and 15 grams of sugar. The strained yogurt is pumped through stainless steel pipes to the second floor where it flows into filling machines. The company has four different domestic fruit suppliers. Cups are filled with yogurt at a rate up to 40, per hour per line. When Dairy Foods visited, the company was making several different products at once, including Flip, Drink the mango flavor , Tubes, Tot Pouches which is a product specially designed for children older than six months , and several flavors of Core like strawberry and blended coconut.

For Flip, all dry ingredients nuts, fruit, chocolate, etc. Each is received individually and tested against quality standards. The ingredients are blended and added onto a shaking conveyor belt which maintains the proper blend of ingredients.

The company uses robotic machines to package the cups into cases and stack them on pallets. The pallets are moved to a conveyor belt that takes the yogurt into chill tunnels that cool the product below 45 F. Finally, the cases move to a cold warehouse, where they sit for several days, solidifying into thick Greek yogurt. From here, product will be shipped directly to customers national grocery chains, drugstores, club and convenience stores or to one of the other three distribution centers in Wilmington, Ill.

There is also a distribution center at the South Edmeston plant. The plant is Safe Quality Foods Level 3-certified and has a 2, square-foot lab on site. The company checks the yogurt from production lines every hour to ensure its safety and quality. With each check comes all of the required micro testing for bacteria, pathogens, etc. This includes texture, Brix, butterfat, organoleptic and shelf-life testing. Before a product is released it has to clear all the tests mentioned above.

It also has to rest for an additional amount of time which Chobani keeps proprietary. Because of its own internal quality control demands, the challenge for the company is making sure yogurt moves fast enough from production to packaging.

The time is measured in hours, not days. Production is planned 12 hours ahead of time, he said. The equipment is washed on a continuous cycle some every 24 hours, others have extended run approvals.

It depends on each line and requirement. Blaisure said the vast majority of the lines are washed when an order is completed; most orders take less than 24 hours to fulfill.

The company uses a centralized CIP system. Every Friday I met with our finance guy. I made sure that our employees and our milk suppliers were paid on time, but we let a lot of other bills go a little longer. Because we had set up the business to be profitable early, every cup of yogurt we sold gave us more free cash.

Our model had other advantages: Yogurt is perishable, which limits inventories; and supermarkets pay us promptly after delivery, whereas most of our suppliers give us a month or two to pay. That really helped our cash flow. A few months after our first sale, I began getting calls from potential investors.

In early we attended a convention in Anaheim called Expo West, where natural products manufacturers meet buyers from big retail chains. Most of them said we would need much more cash if we really wanted to grow. This was all new to me. I was running Chobani as a simple mom-and-pop operation. I had no strategy for dealing with potential investors. But Greek yogurt was becoming so popular that bigger players such as Dannon and Yoplait were going to launch their own versions. So it felt like the race was on.

For a while I took calls and meetings with private equity firms. It was a learning process. But the more I thought about it, the more confident I grew. The product and packaging were really good. And the word of mouth was so strong that marketing was taking care of itself. Besides money, what exactly would these people bring to the table? In we needed to make a big investment to boost our capacity. We were selling , cases a week, and I wanted to increase that to one million cases.

Our growth projections were based on simple math: We were still selling mostly in the Northeast, and if supermarkets in the rest of the country sold as much Chobani as our existing accounts did, the demand would easily justify our expansion plans.

I also knew that as soon as I took money from investors, the clock would start ticking. Private equity investors want to cash out in five to seven years—they would probably push us to sell Chobani to a big food company. I care about the integrity of our product—I want it to be delicious, nutritious, and accessible to everyone. If I took on investors, my ability to stick to this mission would be limited.

I had spent two years living in that factory; it was working now, and it was my baby. Eventually I simply stopped returning calls from potential investors. When I first tasted one of them, it was so terrible I thought it must have spoiled. I sent someone out to buy a few more cups, but they all tasted the same. I even wondered whether the company might deliberately be making its Greek yogurt taste terrible in an attempt to turn off consumers and spoil the entire category in order to preserve the profits of its established brands of sugary yogurt.

There was no need. Today we have a syndicate of banks and a credit line to meet our capital requirements.

Today we produce more than 2 million cases of yogurt a week, and our business is still growing. Every single one of my advisers thinks I should sell a stake in order to diversify. Yogurt is just getting started in America. Multiple wellness rooms will be available across the facility for new mothers, and a new visitor centre will welcome guests and the local community.

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