Chobani to build new $1 billion yogurt plant and create 1,000 jobs in Upstate NY

Update: See when Chobani plans to start construction on new yogurt plant

Rome, N.Y. – Greek yogurt giant Chobani plans to build a $1.2 billion production facility that would bring more than 1,000 jobs to Rome’s Griffiss Business and Technology Park, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.

The project in the former Air Force base 50 miles east of Syracuse represents the nation’s largest investment ever in a natural food production facility and promises to cement New York as the No. 1 yogurt producer in the country, Hochul said in a prepared statement.

“Chobani has been a major employer in the Mohawk Valley for decades, and this massive new $1.2 billion investment will bring more than 1,000 good-paying jobs to Oneida County — the largest natural food manufacturing investment in American history,” Hochul said.

State officials said Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya chose the site in Rome after a nationwide search.

“New York is where Chobani’s journey began,” Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, said in a statement. “It was the perfect spot to start Chobani 20 years ago, and it’s the perfect place to continue our story.”

READ MORE: Why Chobani is doubling down in Upstate: The milk, the sales and the people

By creating more than 1,000 jobs, the project would nearly double Chobani’s total New York workforce. The company employs 1,100 people in South Edmeston and Norwich in Chenango County.

Chobani also employs 1,100 people at a yogurt plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. In March, it announced plans to build a $500 million expansion in Twin Falls that is expected to create a minimum of 160 new jobs.

Once complete, the 1.4 million-square-foot plant in Rome will have up to 28 production lines with a capacity to process over 12 million pounds of milk a day and produce more than 1 billion pounds of yogurt and other dairy products a year.

Chobani is already one of the largest buyers of milk from New York dairy farmers, purchasing over a billion pounds of raw milk from the state’s dairy farms each year.

Once the new plant reaches full capacity, the company would purchase an estimated 6 billion pounds of milk a year, creating additional economic opportunity for the state’s dairy industry. That would mean this single factory could use about a third of the state’s current milk production.

The massive plant is planned for the Triangle parcel at the business park, which was awarded more than $23 million last year from the state’s FAST NY program to complete infrastructure and transportation improvements.

In addition, New York is pledging to provide up to $73 million in Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits to Chobani. Companies in the program earn tax credits over a period of up to 10 years if they meet and maintain job and investment thresholds.

Chobani has pledged to collaborate with Empire State Development, the state’s economic development office, to develop a program to train and provide job opportunities at Chobani to underserved populations.

State officials said the company selected Rome based on several factors, including:

• The area’s skilled workforce, including a high concentration of military veterans, as well as graduates from nearby colleges.
• Easy access to the major population centers of the East Coast.
• Availability of affordable housing in the area.

Dairy is the largest single segment of the state’s $8 billion agricultural industry, with nearly 3,000 dairy farms that produce 16.1 billion pounds of milk annually. New York is the fifth largest producer of milk in the nation and the largest producer of yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese and cottage cheese.

Ulukaya founded Chobani in 2005 in a former Kraft Foods dairy plant in South Edmeston. Within two years, he was making the best-selling Greek yogurt in the United States. The company’s name means shepherd in Greek.

Greek yogurt is strained of excess whey, giving it a thicker texture than regular yogurt.

Ulukaya early on began hiring immigrants and refugees to help fill the growing number of jobs at his plant in rural South Edmeston, busing some in from nearby Utica and hiring translators for those who did not speak English.

Chobani raised its minimum starting wage for full-time manufacturing and corporate hourly workers to $20 an hour in 2023.

The company bought La Colombe, a maker of ready-to-drink coffee products, in December 2023 for $900 million.