Expansion begins at Texas cheese plant

New walls are going up again at the Hilmar Cheese Co. processing facility in Dalhart, Texas.

Barely 28 months after its first milk shipments arrived for processing, phase two of construction at the plant got underway January 14 when cranes lifted concrete wall sections into place to start a $100 million expansion project. Completion is expected late this year.

Included in the project is additional milk storage capacity, natural American-style cheese production lines, and increased production capacity of Hilmar’s whey products.

“Ultimately, the addition will give us the ability to double capacity in Texas,” said company CEO and President John Jeter. “We are installing emerging technology to increase our ability to meet our customers’ changing needs.”

The Dalhart plant opened ahead of schedule in September 2007 after a $100 million initial construction phase that took just 18 months to complete. At its groundbreaking ceremonies in March 2006, a milk processing capacity goal of 4.5 million pounds per day was forecast.

Strategically located in northwest Texas near the convergence of five states, the plant is able to easily access milk from four key milksheds:

• The Hereford/Muleshoe, Texas, area
• The Clovis/Portales, N.M., area
• The Roswell, N.M., area
• The Garden City/Dodge City, Kansas, area

Dalhart plant site manager David Ahlem said the expansion will create 50 new jobs.

Hilmar also operates a cheese and whey products plant in Hilmar, Calif., which is the largest single-site milk processing facility in the United States.

The Hilmar experience

If you take a trip to California and find yourself surrounded by thousands of little, curious brown cows, you know you’ve entered Hilmar country. This past week Hoard’s staff had a chance to visit Hilmar and some of the dairies that make up Hilmar Cheese Company, which annually produces more cheese from one site than any other manufacturer in the world.

We visited the Charles Ahlem Ranch, owned and operated by Chuck and Mark Ahlem, where 5,000 Jersey cows make their home. This farm features a 50-cow rotary parlor with a robotic postdipping system, and also uses RFID implants in the rear leg to track the animals. The Ahlem Ranch has been a pioneer farm in the dairy industry making use of cutting edge technology such as the robotic postdipper, RFID implants, running a stationary TMR mixer, and being ahead of the game in environmental stewardship.

Chuck is one of the founders of the producer-started Hilmar Cheese Company, which averages nearly two million pounds of cheese made per day.

We also had a chance to visit with the Hilmar farm interns who are scattered across different operations throughout the area. These interns are learning the ins and outs of large-scale farming and are hoping to take home management skills and professional relationships that they can use in the future. Look for more information on the Hilmar internship program in an upcoming Young Dairyman article.