A big Idaho employer is spending half a billion dollars to expand. What’s coming and why.
The making of yogurt with milk from Idaho cows is a big business, and it’s now on track to get much bigger.
Chobani opened a yogurt plant in Twin Falls in 2012 that it said (and still says) is the world’s largest. Now, with demand for yogurt products rising, the company wants to make even more. So it’s expanding the plant by half, adding jobs, and providing another boost to Idaho’s dairy industry.
Founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey who founded Chobani in 2005 by reopening a closed yogurt factory in upstate New York, credits Idaho’s political leaders with helping Chobani grow, just as he did 13 years ago.
“This is a place where you say, ‘It’s easy to do business,’ ” Ulukaya said at a groundbreaking ceremony, where Gov. Brad Little, Sen. Mike Crapo, Rep. Mike Simpson and Twin Falls Mayor Ruth Pierce were among featured speakers.
The original plant had 1 million square feet. A 2016 expansion added 100,000 more. This one will add 500,000, the company said in a news release.
The expanded plant will add 24 production lines at least 160 workers to the 1,200-member workforce already there, Chobani said. Chobani’s wages are “almost 12% higher than the regional average,” the firm said. Chobani did not provide its average wage, but the Idaho Department of Labor’s latest profile of south-central Idaho’s economy said the area’s average wage in 2023 was $48,979. Twelve percent above that is $54,856, or more than $26 per hour.
Founder a billionaire who champions refugees
Known for its thick Greek yogurts, the privately held business made a reported $2.5 billion in sales in 2023 and has made Ulukaya a billionaire. Forbes estimated his net worth as of Thursday at $2.3 billion. Once Chobani’s sole owner, he remains the majority owner, and he moved toward an initial public offering of stock in 2021, only to withdraw that plan later, citing market conditions, according to reports.
Ulukaya has drawn attention over the past decade for employee-friendly business decisions. He gave full-time mothers and fathers six weeks of paid parental leave starting in 2017 – and on Friday, Chobani announced that it is boosting that leave to 12 weeks. He raised the company’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2020.
He has also drawn attention for championing refugees, who make up hundreds of the workers at the Twin Falls plant. When President Donald Trump moved to block refugees from certain countries in 2017, the first year of his first term, Ulukaya told the refugees on Chobani’s payroll that he would “have their backs every step of the way.” He joined other businesses in challenging Trump in court.
And when radio host Alex Jones of InfoWars linked Ulukaya in 2017 to a sexual assault case involving refugee children in Twin Falls, Chobani sued him. Jones vowed to “win or die” but soon settled the lawsuit with a retraction and an apology.
‘Get some herds,’ CEO tells Idaho farmers
Chobani said it plans to buy almost 2 billion pounds of milk this year. “To my farmers friends … you better start getting some herds,” Ulukaya said at Wednesday’s groundbreaking, drawing laughter.
The company also has plants in New York, Michigan and Australia. Its Twin Falls plant also produces coffee creamers and dairy-free oat milk.
“Chobani yogurt is America’s No. 1 yogurt brand, made with natural ingredients without artificial preservatives,” the firm says.
The U.S. yogurt market is dominated by Danone (maker of Activia and Oikos), Chobani, General Mills (maker of Yoplait), Fage and Lactalis, according to Mordor Intelligence, a market-research firm.