HP Hood

HP Hood Revives Old Yogurt Plant in Batavia

The dairy processor purchased the idled yogurt production facility in Western New York and plans to invest over $200 million to convert it from mass production of yogurt to two extended shelf life liquid products.

Division: Victor Construction Estimator: Brian Shaffer Project Manager: Richard Maher Foreman: Jeff Matthews

With existing plants at capacity and demand growing, HP Hood was looking for a facility the company could get up and running quickly for long-shelf-life dairy and nondairy products. The plant was built in 2012 for $206 million as a joint venture between PepsiCo and Theo Muller Group and became known as the Quaker Muller Dairy plant. Now, it's the HP Hood plant, which Hood acquired from Dairy Farmers of America for $54 million. Hood is adding 100,000-square-feet of refrigerated warehouse space to the plant, which is already 363,000-square-feet. After the expansion, with retooling the plant, and the purchase price, Hood will have sunk nearly $200 million into the new facility by the time it goes into full production. O'Connell was contracted to support demolition of the yogurt processing equipment in mid-2017. Hood has been able to begin running sellable almond milk since July of 2018 and is continuing work through additional phases this winter. Expectations are that Hood will be in full milk production by Spring of 2019. OCE has had up to thirty electricians at the plant working up to seven 10-hour days. We provided major distribution work to support all of the facility's processing equipment and new interior/exterior lighting as well as the fire and security systems. Crews also installed a new 115kV - 13.2kV service from the existing substation, previously built by OCE, to power an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) building. We will be working on the new state-of-the-art ASRS cold storage building this fall, completing all of the control work and power distribution for the new stacking system.