$270M expansion at Cayuga Milk Ingredients to double workforce

Dale Mattoon — Cayuga Milk Ingredients
Paul Szmal 6:09
The word 'CAYUGA' in blue capital letters with a registered trademark symbol on a light background.
The logo for Cayuga Milk Ingredients, a local business in the Finger Lakes region.
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Cayuga Milk Ingredients is in the midst of a $270 million expansion that will add a consumer products bottling facility to its existing powder plant in Cayuga County — and roughly double its workforce in the process.

Dale Mattoon, a dairy farmer and chairman of the board of Cayuga Marketing, joined the FLX Morning Podcast on June 17 to discuss the project. Mattoon was one of the original investors in the venture, which traces its roots back to 2008 when a group of Cayuga County dairy farmers began exploring ways to add value to the local milk supply. They made their first formal investment in 2012, and the original Cayuga Milk Ingredients plant came online in 2014.

For the past decade, CMI has operated as a protein powder plant. But following a strategic planning session about two years ago, the board decided it was time to diversify. The result is a new consumer products facility featuring eight bottling lines in a variety of packaging formats. Mattoon emphasized that CMI will operate as a contract packager — a so-called “toll milling” operation — rather than launching its own branded milk product. The new plant will bottle for other brands while drawing on ingredients produced at the existing CMI facility.

When complete, the expanded operation is expected to employ around 300 people across hauling, the ingredients plant, and the new consumer products facility. That’s up from approximately 150 total employees today.

Mattoon framed the investment as part of a broader wave of dairy processing growth across New York State. He pointed to Chobani’s planned second yogurt plant, a new Fairlife bottling facility near Rochester, Great Lakes Cheese’s expanded capacity in Western New York, and other recent facility upgrades as signs that the regional industry is on solid footing. He noted that the Finger Lakes and Central New York are among the strongest milk-producing regions in the country, with clean water, favorable climate, and an experienced farming community.

“These milk plants are probably at least 50-year investments,” Mattoon said. “When these folks are investing millions and millions of dollars, they’re going to be here for decades. Dairy farming is here to stay for the long haul.”

Read Full Transcript

Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues now at 7.53, and my guest this morning is from Cayuga Milk Ingredients. Dale Mattoon is here with us. Dale, good morning. How are you, sir?

Dale Mattoon: Good morning, Paul. I'm doing well.

Paul Szmal: Excellent. There's been a significant expansion to the tune of about $270 million at Cayuga Milk Ingredients. Can you tell me a little bit about what's involved with that expansion?

Dale Mattoon: Well, I can try. I'm actually a dairy farmer. I'm chairman of the board of Cayuga Marketing. myself and my fellow board members as dairymen in Cayuga County started this project, actually we started working on trying to figure out what to do here in Cayuga County back in 2008. I think 2012, we all wrote checks and made our first investment in what became the original Cayuga Milk Ingredients plant that we started up in 2014. And we've been operating it for 10 years as a powder plant. We make protein powder. And about two years ago, we had a strategic planning session amongst our management team and board. And we decided that it was time to diversify and expand the plant. We wanted to grow the plant, but we wanted to grow it doing something different than making more milk powder. And so after researching a lot of options, we decided to build this consumer products plant. Basically, this is a packaging lines, bottling lines. I think we're putting in eight bottling lines, all various different packaging, and we're going to be a toll milling plant. So we're going to package for other brands. We're not going to be, you're not going to see a Cayuga branded liquid milk product on the store shelf, but we're going to package for other folks and hopefully utilize a lot of the milk and milk ingredient products that we make in our current CMI plant in the new bottling plant.

Paul Szmal: And what kind of employment opportunities is this going to create?

Dale Mattoon: Tremendous. There's, by the time we get done, there's going to be 300 jobs between people who pick up and haul milk for us to people who work in the ingredients plant and in the consumer products plant.

Paul Szmal: Wow. And I think we've historically, we've been running around maybe 150 people altogether with hauling and running CMI. So this is basically doubling a number of people that we're going to employ.

Paul Szmal: What does this expansion mean for the future of Cayuga milk ingredients and for the dairy industry as a whole in the region?

Dale Mattoon: Well, it's obviously really beneficial to the dairy industry as a whole. Cayuga County and central New York, the Finger Lakes region, is one of the powerhouses nationally for milk production. We have a lot of high quality water here, which is important. We have all four seasons. The cattle seem to do better here in the northern half of the country than in the south. And here in the northeast, New York has traditionally always been a very, very strong dairy state and continues to be today. So what you need when you have all those natural resources, you obviously need processing and we also have people. So in the northeast, you have people to be consumers. You have the cows and the natural resources. In the middle, you need processing. And that's why you're seeing, look at the expansion we just heard about with Chobani. They've already got a yogurt plant in New York, now they're going to build another one. Fairlife has come to New York and they're going to put a bottling plant up near Rochester. Our Cayuga milk ingredient plant is expanding. Great Lakes Cheese down in western New York basically doubled their processing capacity. There's a lot of other plants that have made changes to either expand or improve their facilities here in New York recently. So tremendous amount of processing investment here in New York. That's really great for the industry because that means dairy farming is here to stay for the long haul. These milk plants are probably at least 50 year investments. So when these folks are investing millions and millions of dollars in these milk plants, they're going to be here for decades.

Paul Szmal: And Dale, I appreciate the knowledge this morning. Thank you for joining us, sir.

Dale Mattoon: You're very welcome. Have a great day.

Paul Szmal: Yeah, you too as well.