The new Midwest Cheese plant in St. Johns, Mich. The 370,000-square-foot plant is one of the largest cheese manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

Glanbia’s successful joint venture with Dairy Farmers of America and Select Milk Producers at Southwest Cheese in Clovis, N.M., has provided a springboard for a new cheese plant in St. Johns, Mich.

The $470 million Midwest Cheese plant began operations in October 2020, processing 2.9 billion pounds of milk annually — 8 million pounds daily. It produces 300 million pounds of cheese and 20 million pounds of whey a year in one of the most technologically advanced dairy processing facilities in the U.S.

Things have changed a lot in the 15 years since the New Mexico plant began operation. Those changes are reflected in the design of the Michigan plant, said George Chappell, vice president of dairy operations for Glanbia Nutritionals.

Dairy Farmers of America and Select Milk Producers are also partners in the new plant, supplying the milk, while Glanbia makes and markets the cheese and whey.

Glanbia used a lot of 3-dimensional modeling with the general contractor to line up all the equipment, pumps, pipes, hole penetrations and electrical lines for operations.

“It was amazing the accuracy of which we could predict where we needed to place equipment,” he said during the latest “Dairy Download” podcast.

The benefit of that was less rework, less chance for error and the ability to take the plant to full production as quickly as possible without “bumps along the way” once it was built, he said.

“One of the things that’s really made this project a success is we brought together kind of what we consider to be some of the best of the best in the industry,” he said.

Glanbia is efficient at owning and operating a large cheese manufacturing facility, he said.

“So even on the outset, we had a very clear vision of what we wanted this plant to deliver. And we laid out very clear success criteria for our contractors,” he said.

Due to the size of the facility — 370,000 square feet — operations have to be broken into chunks. One of the contractors on the project said Glanbia effectively designed seven buildings under one roof, he said.

But plant design is not the only thing that has changed over the years.

“There’s been some good advances in the process equipment and what you can do in controlling variability. But the biggest thing for us over the past two decades has really been automation,” he said.

“It’s the secret sauce that you don’t see behind the scenes,” he said.

There have also been some proprietary ways in which Glanbia makes its products that gives that little added something customers need, whether it’s in terms of flavor, functionality or reduction in losses, he said.

“Those are the things that take a project from being a good project to being an exceptional project,” he said.

The plant has thousands of pumps and valves that come into the system as data points. Glanbia converts those data points into information for its onsite leaders to make the best decisions possible with the most complete information, he said.

“That’s what a good automation system will do for you,” he said.

The industry is also moving into an evolution where the equipment kind of watches over itself, he said.

“So before quote/unquote bad things happen, the equipment can identify that and at least send alerts if not correct itself before problems happen,” he said.