A Cool Million

Dairy Foods, June, 2001

Hilmar Cheese Co., Hilmar Calif.

Nine million lbs of milk used each day. One million lbs of cheese produced daily.

Cheese certainly is a big business these days, and Hilmar Cheese Co. is a big business within that business. With those staggering numbers, Hilmar gets no challenges when it claims to have the largest single-site cheese plant in the world.

Hilmar last year completed a multimillion dollar, 125,000-sq-ft expansion to its sole plant in Hilmar, Calif. That brings it to 295,000 sq ft and 400 employees, giving the private company more capacity, more flexibility and the undisputed "world's largest" title for at least a few more years.

The 18-month long project increased capacity by nearly 80%. More important in some strategic respects are new equipment for processing whey protein concentrate and lactose and the ability to make muenster, jack and alternate make mozzarella cheeses alongside the plant's traditional American/cheddar.

Those are the keys to Hilmar's future success: producing more types of cheese and making better use of ingredient byproducts.

"Sure, cheese has been and is the vast majority of our business," says Pres./CEO John Jeter. "But we're really in the milk reconfiguration business."

The expansion "added a little more of everything," said Tedd Struckmeyer, v.p. of engineering and business development. But one of the key components is a new protein dryer, at 88 ft tall, it processes 3,000 lbs per hour. Other key additions were in milk receiving (6-in, lines cut tanker unloading time in half) and in cheese production, adding both the new varieties and the ability to make 640-lb blocks.

"We are positioning Hilmar Cheese to supply growing cheese and whey consumption around the world by utilizing the abundant supply of milk in this region," Jeter says. Indeed, Hilmar sits near the intersection of the Nos. 2 and 4 counties in the U.S. in milk production and less than 100 miles from No. 1 Tulare County (No. 3 is in southern California).

Hilmar was founded in 1984 by 12 local dairy farm families who were frustrated with the uncertain and often low price paid for their raw milk. The company has no cheese brand of its own, except for that sold in its sizable company store. Retail sales account for half its output. Industrial cheese (as an ingredient) is 28% of the business, and foodservice accounts for the rest.

The plant is really two plants on the same site; and one essentially is two plants under the same roof.

"Our goal is to get more and more out of the milk we use," says Jeter. "We've been reasonably aggressive, but there's more we can do." Naturally, that means optimal use of whey. Hilmar exports 65 million lbs of whey protein concentrate and lactose each year.

The future holds more of the same for Hilmar. Growth would be nice, the management team says, but don't look for Hilmar to start producing ice cream or fluid milk. "Our motto has become 'to get more out of what we already have,'" says Jeter. "I think there are a lot of new things we can go after within the realm of cheese and its ingredients. One of the keys to our success has been our focus."

HILMAR CHEESE

Location: Hilmar, Calif.

Products: American, Cheddar, muenster, jack, mozzarella, WPC

Size: 295,000 sq ft

Employees: 400

Details: 18-month-long project, completed last September, included the addition of whey processing capabilities