Chobani to start building new Upstate NY yogurt plant this year

Rome, N.Y. — Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya is wasting no time moving his plans to build a new, $1.2 billion yogurt plant in Rome along.

Ulukaya, who founded the Greek yogurt brand 20 years ago in the Chenango County community of South Edmeston, said Tuesday construction will begin on the 1.4-million-square-foot dairy processing plant this year.

He told reporters at a ceremonial groundbreaking at Griffiss Business and Technology Park that the company will be submitting construction plans to the city of Rome the same day and hopes to have the plant up and running by 2027.

“That means that the county and the city and the state, we’ve got to get to work training people, attracting people,” he said. “We need people.”

Ulukaya said the plant will employ 1,000 people when it reaches full operation, producing a billion pounds of dairy products per years.

And those products will include more than just Chobani’s Greek yogurt, the top-selling Greek yogurt brand in the nation. It will also make protein shakes, coffee creamers, coffee drinks and “some other innovations that I will keep as a surprise later on,” he said.

The plant will not only nearly double Chobani’s workforce in New York. It could prove to be a huge boon to New York dairy farmers.

Chobani says it will process over 12 million pounds of milk per day at the plant, with much of that milk coming from New York farmers.

The plant, to be built near the end the former Air Force Base ’s runway, will instantly become one of Rome’s biggest employers.