Dannon yogurt plant is growing

WEST JORDAN — The Dannon Co. Inc. is creating a stir with a multimillion-dollar expansion at its yogurt and dairy drink plant here.

The multiyear project will double the size of the plant and more than double the amount of product it churns out — all in hopes that Americans consume more yogurt.

"The yogurt category is driving our expansion," company spokesman Michael Neuwirth said. "We are benefiting from the category growth, but, by and large, Americans eat relatively small amounts of yogurt and dairy drinks."

In the United States, he said, the typical person consumes about eight pounds of yogurt each year. But people in Spain or France or the United Kingdom eat about seven times that amount.

"From a category development perspective, the yogurt market in the United States is somewhat underdeveloped," Neuwirth said.

The $4 billion U.S. yogurt market is growing about 8 percent a year.

"But if we get per capita consumption to one-half that of the more-developed countries, that would still be three to four times what it is here currently," he said. "So, three to four times $4 billion — it's a substantial category."

To meet the needs of expected customer demand, Dannon is expanding two of its three manufacturing facilities, one in Ohio and a 200,000-square-foot plant in West Jordan. The 10-year-old Utah facility, which was a water-bottling facility the first three years of its life, will occupy 400,000 square feet when expanded.

Neuwirth called the West Jordan plant "our beachhead to the West."

"Dannon has its roots in the East. It was founded in New York, and our market share is stronger in the East. But through construction of the Utah facility and now with the expansion of that facility, we are aggressively expanding in the West," he said.

The facility was designed for modular expansion, and construction began last year. "This is not a rush job," Neuwirth said. "This is an expansion that will take a couple of years."

The facility has about 200 employees, but it will have another 100 on board in a year or so.

"Right now, we're expanding the footprint of the building, which includes adding square footage to accommodate more receipt of incoming ingredients such as milk, and expanding production capacity as well as the area of the plant that handles truck traffic for outgoing finished products," he said.