Wilcox Ups The Ante In Local Dairy Competition Cheney Operation Will Battle Broadview, Darigold For Market Share

The last time Spokane County supported three commercial milk bottling plants, Jimmy Carter was president and whole milk was popular.

Since then, the number of commercial dairies nationwide has dropped from nearly 2,000 to 500 as factories closed or merged to make way for high-speed plants that can truck refrigerated milk, cheese and ice cream hundreds of miles in every direction.

So how come Wilcox Farms is spending $4 million to open a new milk bottling plant in Cheney?

The family-owned company, based 25 miles south of Tacoma in Roy, Wash., announced last week that in 1997 it will open a creamery to serve the Inland Northwest. The dairy will be the third in the county behind Darigold Inc. and Broadview Dairy, both in North Spokane.

The announcement was a switch from Wilcox’s earlier plan to build in Moses Lake, where the company, which will reap $75 million in sales this year, already has an enormous egg-hatching factory and dairy herd.

Wilcox officials claim the Inland Northwest economy has grown large enough for another supplier. But industry experts wonder if Wilcox hopes to grow by picking off one or more key accounts held by Broadview, Darigold or the Safeway Stores’ dairy in Moses Lake.

One target may be Albertson’s, a Boise-based supermarket chain that buys milk for its Inland Northwest stores from Broadview. However, in Seattle, Albertson’s gets its milk from Wilcox.

“To say that we’re going after anybody’s business would be wrong,” said J.T. Wilcox, the 33-year-old heir to the family business who will personally manage the Cheney plant for at least two years.

“But we’re also an aggressive marketing company. We’ll continue to expand our business because if you don’t expand, you don’t stay in business.”

The milk buyer at Albertson’s headquarters said the company has made no deal with Wilcox in Spokane. But he left open the possibility that the chain could switch if it could get a better deal.

The Wilcox dairy in Roy currently ships 15-25 truck loads weekly to Eastern Washington customers, including Price-Costco, Food Services of America and Top Foods.

The Cheney plant will distribute white and chocolate milk in one-gallon jugs to Spokane, Tri-Cities, North Idaho and Eastern Montana, J.T. Wilcox said. It will not bid for school districts’ small carton contracts.

The new plant, which will be built southwest of downtown Cheney on Mullinix Road, is expected to be a low-cost producer. It will employ 20 nonunion workers and produce up to 100,000 to 200,000 gallons per week.

“A new plant with the latest technology, efficiency and less labor, may have an edge,” said Robert Cropp, dairy marketing specialist at the University of Wisconsin. “We’ve seen companies come into a new market, bottling only gallon jugs, and they can be very competitive.”

Darigold said it produces nearly 300,000 gallons a week, and employs 100 people. Broadview said it produces nearly 250,000 gallons a week, and employs 90 people.

Darigold officials declined to comment about Wilcox.

Broadview general manager Art Coffey said he’s not concerned about Wilcox.

“The trend is for operations to get larger, not smaller,” he said. “We can produce what they do in a week in one day.”

But whether Broadview can make money doing it is unknown. Earlier this year, the company sought concessions from union members because it had lost $400,000 in the past four years. Broadview was bought out of bankruptcy court in 1991 by Goodale & Barbieri Cos. Since then, it has been renovated, survived a labor strike, and gone through three general managers.

, DataTimes