Glanbia Foods Breaks Ground on New $15 Million Facility

Glanbia’s CIC will provide additional resources necessary to further collaborate and build relationships with its national and international customers, suppliers, and universities in developing new cheese making processes and products with superior quality and value.

24 Jul 2012 --- Glanbia Foods, the world’s largest producer of American style cheese, took the first on Friday at a groundbreaking ceremony to initiate construction of a state-of-the-art Cheese Innovation Center (CIC) and corporate headquarters.

Headquartered in Twin Falls for over 20 years, Glanbia has entered into a long-term lease agreement with Uptown Developers, LLC who will invest $15 million to build a three-story 35,000 square foot office complex and a 14,000 square foot research center to support Glanbia’s growing export and new cheese product innovation efforts. The site, slated to open in spring 2013, will initially employ 100 workers with room for expansion.

“Glanbia’s has a bright future in southern Idaho and we are here to stay,” said Jeff Williams, president and CEO of Glanbia Foods. “Our new corporate headquarters will consolidate our executive and administration employees under one roof but more importantly, our Cheese Innovation Center (CIC) will allow us to develop new value added cheese products, processes, services and solutions to meet the changing needs of our customers,” he said. “Thanks to the superior quality milk provided by local dairy farmers, we are able to expand our products and services to an expanding national and global cheese market. This new Glanbia complex will serve as the bridge to our future.”

Glanbia’s CIC will provide additional resources necessary to further collaborate and build relationships with its national and international customers, suppliers, and universities in developing new cheese making processes and products with superior quality and value. The CIC will also help streamline work needed to move products from pilot plant scale to full scale production.

“The most efficient and effective way of creating new jobs in our state is to support our existing
Idaho companies by helping them grow and expand,” said Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter. “We are proud of Glanbia and its long-standing commitment to the Magic Valley. This new expansion represents a significant investment in our state and is in keeping with Glanbia’s position as a state-of-of the-art leader in its industry.”

Twin Falls Mayor Greg Lanting noted Glanbia’s expansion in the historic downtown Twin Falls district will serve as an anchor for further business growth and commerce. “The economic impact of Glanbia’s presence in downtown will be significant,” Lanting said. “We anticipate a boom to this area over the years, thanks to Glanbia’s commitment to this community,” he said.

The Twin Falls Urban Renewal Agency will provide about $800,000 in improvements to the site and provide additional parking in the area. Glanbia Foods processes 23 million pounds of milk everyday into cheese from three world-class manufacturing facilities in southern Idaho and New Mexico employing over 1,000 people, shipping more than 830 million pounds of cheese and 170 million pounds of value-added whey products annually to nearly 30 countries.