Largest ag investment in state history aims for 3 billion pounds of milk, a phased but fast-track 2027 startup and a challenge for dairy farms to grow

SCHNECKSVILLE, Pa. — After years of working to attract new dairy processing while watching farms, milk production, and processing capacity slip away relative to growth exploding elsewhere, Pennsylvania dairy scored a major win Sept. 1 with what the Governor called “the largest single agricultural investment in state history” — and a new market that will eventually use more than 3 billion pounds of Pennsylvania milk annually.

Chobani plans to invest $1.2 billion over five years to acquire, convert, and expand Keurig Dr Pepper’s (KDP) 1.5-million-square-foot campus in Upper Macungie Township near Allentown. The project is expected to create more than 900 jobs, with 10 production lines making high-protein dairy beverages and other dairy products.

“This is a generational investment and a generational opportunity for our dairy farmers, and it is indeed a real game changer,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said at the announcement at Crystal Spring Farm in Lehigh County.

Pennsylvania produced 9.7 billion pounds of milk in 2025. Chobani’s projected needs at full scale equal about 30% of that current statewide production.

Founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said he hopes all of it will come from Pennsylvania farms.

“Three billion pounds is a massive amount of milk,” he acknowledged, confirming conversations with DFA and Land O’Lakes have been “encouraging,” with commitment letters.

“The trust and confidence is very high, but we still have some work to do.”

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding called it a belief in the Commonwealth’s potential, backed by $127 million in farmer-focused funding to help dairies make decisions about their future here.

High-protein milk — and fast

Farmshine’s first question to Ulukaya was what products Chobani intends to focus on with all that milk.

He described taking the “high-quality amazing milk” from farms and producing “high-nutrition, high-value natural milk products,” using a process that removes water to concentrate protein.

Asked if this involves technology developed for Chobani’s Super Milk, he confirmed: “Yes.”

Super Milk is a shelf-stable, higher-protein milk Chobani has already been producing on a limited basis not yet for retail, but strictly for donation through the American Red Cross for disaster relief worldwide and food-banks in the communities where the company does business.

Pennsylvania production will go beyond that to include multi-serve milk, high-protein shakes and other future dairy innovations.

Ulukaya said Chobani’s total sales of yogurt and other products have grown about 20% annually over the past three years, and he wants capacity fast. The Allentown location puts the plant within 500 miles of 40% of the U.S. population.

“Demand for good-quality natural food, especially coming from the farmers and dairies, has never been this good, this high,” he said.

Chobani completed an expansion in Idaho and is expanding its coffee drink line in Michigan while starting its three-phase dairy plant in Rome, New York, with first production there expected in 2028.

Pennsylvania offers a fast-track. The KDP transaction is expected to close in about four weeks. Chobani plans to immediately launch a $270 million first-phase project with production starting by early summer 2027 — six to eight months after closing.

“I told you, Governor, we’ll be faster, bolder,” Ulukaya said. There will probably be “a lot more need for milk than we said.”

Can Pennsylvania supply it?

That question was part of Chobani’s deliberations.

“When Hamdi first — appropriately so — questioned whether our dairy farmers could meet this demand,” Shapiro said, Secretary Redding “went out and engaged directly with our dairy farmers and guaranteed that Pennsylvania dairy farmers could get it done.”

Ulukaya had heard the pessimistic view — milk production was declining and “no one can stop this.”

However, it’s clear that 3 billion pounds represents the annual production of roughly 140,000 to 150,000 cows at current production levels. Some milk will shift among buyers as Chobani phases in, but the phased production offers a runway to that reality, and if existing processors maintain supplies, the new demand puts pressure on Pennsylvania to grow — and it brings the needed competition for that to happen.

The familiar question flips from ‘Where will my milk find a home?’ to ‘Where will all this milk come from?’

That means more cows, barns, feed, land, labor, nutrient-management capacity, water, financing, and permits.

Market. Motivation. Money.

Shapiro and Redding said $127 million will be invested in programs available to Pennsylvania dairy farmers, separate from a $50 million Pennsylvania Sites investment for public infrastructure associated with the Chobani project.

In a direct interview later, Redding told Farmshine the farmer-focused approach builds on existing programs through the Center for Dairy Excellence, Ag Innovation grants, the conservation districts, producer surveys and econometrics already done, the state’s Dairy Future Commission, the Dairy Development program, all of the things, including farm-transition work.

“We want the next generation to be hopeful,” he said. “It’s a big deal. You have a market, you have motivation, and then we need to back it up with money.”

“What the governor and his team have done, providing funds to support the farmers to increase the herd, is something very unique,” Ulukaya said. “I’ve not seen that before.”

‘Almost zero’ to yes

Getting Chobani to Pennsylvania nearly didn’t happen. The company already had a relationship with KDP when that facility became available. But water, energy and wastewater posed what Ulukaya called “super big” challenges.

At one point, he told his team “The possibility of this happening is almost zero.”

State and local officials, municipalities and the Lehigh County Authority (LCA) worked through the infrastructure issues. Having recently completed a regional plan involving multiple municipalities, LCA CEO Liesel Groos said: “We found the tools we needed already in the toolbox.”

“Every single interaction has been businesslike,” the Chobani founder said of the Governor’s team. “It’s not bureaucratic layers, but direct with everything on the table. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Why a 100-cow dairy?

Ulukaya didn’t want the announcement at the industrial site. He wanted a dairy farm.

Crystal Spring is a fifth-generation farm where the Sell Family milks 100 cows, processes about 25% of its own milk and cream for bottling and making ice cream for its farm store and markets the remainder through Land O’Lakes.

“Crystal Spring Farm is a true American dairy farm,” Jacob Sell said as the first to the podium on Tuesday, September 1. “Every cow in our herd was born and raised right here on our farm and we grow all of our own feed.”

Sell said dairy farmers are among “the hardest working, dedicated, compassionate, innovative, and caring people you’ll ever meet. They will truly appreciate the opportunity to contribute their milk to help us expand the dairy industry.”

For Ulukaya, the setting was personal. “In my soul, I’m a farmer,” he said of growing up in a Turkish sheepherding family that made cheese and yogurt and, after coming to the United States, spent two years milking about 70 cows on an upstate New York dairy.

His story is truly inspirational and he told pieces of it during the announcement. In 2005, Ulukaya purchased the shuttering Kraft yogurt factory in South Edmeston, New York that continues operations after several expansions.

“I didn’t see the broken walls and how old the building was,” he recalled. “I saw the people who were closing the factory.”

He bought it with an SBA loan and rehired four employees as his core team. Chobani yogurt launched in 2007. Within five years, the plant employed around 1000 people, and the company had reached $1 billion in sales. More Chobani meant more milk from surrounding farms.

“The treasure is in the town, it is in the farmland,” Ulukaya said, “and these people who work with their hands every single day.”

The Upper Macungie campus Chobani is acquiring sits on the site of a former Kraft-Heinz operation that closed in 2016 before KDP redeveloped the property. The Lehigh Valley knows that comeback story, too.

“We’ve had our down years, but we brushed ourselves off, and got up,” said Don Cunningham, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation. “We still make things here.”

Ulukaya talked about his love for food manufacturing and the people who work with their hands from farm to table: “We’ve found a new house in Pennsylvania.”

‘A moment of hope’

Redding had watched Ulukaya’s story years earlier. “It was inspiring,” he said. “It spoke to values and a vision.”

He also has seen Pennsylvania dairy families go through good years, lean years and changing markets, “and still, you get up every morning. You schedule your vacations around the cows. You name them, you show them, you care for them.”

Describing the state’s dairy industry as resilient, proud, advancing, rooted, and “ready to grow,” Redding set the challenge: “Every dairy farmer across this Commonwealth, every cooperative, processor, large and small, I want you to hear this moment for what it is. It’s a moment of hope… another reason to believe that the next generation will be successful.

“We are saying very clearly that Pennsylvania intends to remain a national leader in dairy farms and dairy families.”

Pennsylvania is unique, and that is where the response to opportunity will be built: farm-by-farm, family-by-family, with for the first time in a long time, a major new market coming into the Commonwealth, wanting Pennsylvania milk.