Chobani’s mission has been clear from the start: make better food for more people. It emphasizes that just as much today as when the company was founded by chairman and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya in 2007.

Dairy processors can see their future in this one statistic: 97% of millennials are likely to buy store brands. Someone has to manufacture those brands. It might as well be your company. When Dairy Foods surveyed its readers in 2016, it found that 40% do provide contract manufacturing services.

Voting has begun to select the Dairy Foods 2017 Dairy Plant of the Year.  The 14 U.S. dairy processing companies manufacture fluid milk, cheese, ice cream or cultured dairy products.

In 2016, to accommodate its growth, Norwich, N.Y.-based Chobani invested $100 million to complete a 300,000-square-foot expansion to its manufacturing facility in Twin Falls, Idaho. Now totally 1,000,000 square feet, the plant (which opened in 2013) is said to be the largest yogurt manufacturing facility in the world.

Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese is the Wisconsin Family Business of the Year. And two California organic dairy processors take on a new distribution partner.

IDFA hails the milk shippers group’s decision to align the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance with FSMA’s regulatory requirements in the preventive controls rule for human food.

Ready-to-drink dairy/coffee beverages are a huge opportunity for Berner Food and Beverage, a contract manufacturer and private label supplier in Illinois that expanded its dairy plant. 

Retailers are advertising ice cream this week, even though ad numbers declined 5% from last week. The national weighted average advertised price for a package of ice cream is $3.06.