MWC receives 2021 Dairy Foods Dairy Plant of the Year Award

Dairy Foods magazine has named MWC, a state-of-the-art cheese and whey plant in St. Johns, Michigan, the recipient of the 2021 Dairy Foods Dairy Plant

“We are deeply appreciative of Dairy Foods bestowing this award to MWC,” said George Chappell, vice president of dairy operations at Glanbia Nutritionals. Tom Tench, chief operating officer at Glanbia Nutritionals, added, “We set out to create a best-in-class dairy processing facility in St. Johns, and it is an honor to be recognized for that achievement.” 

The nearly 400,000 square-foot facility is operated by Glanbia Nutritionals and employs nearly 260 local residents and processes over 2.9 billion pounds of milk from local farmers into more than 300 million pounds of superior quality block cheese and 20 million pounds of valued-added whey proteins each year.  Opened in October 2020, the plant was fully commissioned on June 1, 2021.  

Design and construction of MWC was provided by Shambaugh & Son LP, a subsidiary of EMCOR Group Inc. “We knew from the start that this project would utilize some of the newest and most sophisticated technology the food processing world has ever seen,” said Paul R. Meyers, Jr., P.E., president and CEO of Shambaugh. “We also knew it would utilize some of the largest food processing equipment installed to date.”    

Summarizing the project, Brian Phelan, CEO at Glanbia Nutritionals said: “We are proud to have built one of the most technologically advanced dairy plants in the world. I would like to thank the entire Glanbia Nutritionals team who worked tirelessly to deliver this project from the construction phase through to commissioning, as well as our construction partners Shambaugh & Son LP who were key to supporting our overall project delivery. Finally, I would like to thank the state and city authorities for their continuous support and of course, our great partners, DFA and Select Milk Producers.” 

About Glanbia Nutritionals 

Glanbia Nutritionals is a $3.24 billion [€2.68 billion] nutrition solutions and cheese business with more than 2,900 employees and a presence in 19 countries. Its proteins, custom premix solutions, cheese, bioactive ingredients, plant-based solutions, flavors, micronutrients, bakery ingredients, functionally optimized nutrients and edible films are sold in over 130 countries worldwide into sports nutrition, healthy lifestyle nutrition, mainstream food and beverage, clinical nutrition, infant nutrition, personal care and animal nutrition markets. For more information, visit www.glanbianutritionals.com.