HARRISBURG, Pa. — “Protein and protein and protein are big, and that’s not a fad.”

Chobani Vice President of Government Affairs Max Finberg said this during the Center for Dairy Excellence bi-monthly “All Things Dairy” call on Wednesday, Oct. 21, when company and Pennsylvania officials discussed Chobani’s $1.2 billion conversion of the former Keurig Dr Pepper plant near Allentown.

Plant operations are expected to begin next year, and it won’t be yogurt. Super Milk will be the first product.

“The idea that dairy continues to have a healthy halo, and continues to be a sought-after product, we don’t expect that to change,” Finberg said. “And we’re gonna ride that until the cows come home.”

Chobani grew about 20% last year, he said, compared with food companies in general that are “basically stagnant or growing 1 or 2%.”

Finberg said founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya has four guideposts for the foods Chobani makes: delicious, nutritious, natural, and accessible.

The company’s first cup of Greek yogurt was sold in 2007, two years after Ulukaya bought a shuttered Kraft yogurt plant in upstate New York.

Five years later, Chobani reached $1 billion in revenue and built its second plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, now described by Finberg as the largest yogurt plant in the world. Growth since then has taken Chobani well beyond the original yogurt cup.

Its strained Greek yogurt delivers the higher protein consumers increasingly seek. Its drinkable Greek yogurt business is “going gangbusters,” Finberg said.

Chobani also acquired Philadelphia-founded La Colombe and is expanding production of its ready-to-drink coffee products in Muskegon, Michigan.

Then there’s the cream. Making Greek yogurt from fluid milk leaves Chobani with acid whey and cream.

“We were selling our cream by the ton,” Finberg said, adding that the company began asking whether that cream could become something more.

“What about making an all-natural dairy — all-dairy — coffee creamer as opposed to the partially hydrogenated oil and stuff none of us can pronounce?” Finberg said. “So, our coffee creamer business is going well.”

Chobani is now investing a multi-state total of more than $4 billion to expand manufacturing capacity in Pennsylvania, New York, Idaho, and Michigan.

The 1.5-million-square-foot Allentown-area plant will give Chobani something Finberg said the company didn’t have — capacity to manufacture new products outside its core yogurt business.

“This plant is designed to take us outside of just the yogurt category … to make new innovative products that we come up with,” he said.

The first announced product is Chobani Super Milk.

Finberg said Ulukaya originally asked the company to develop shelf-stable milk that could be donated for disaster response and hunger relief. Fluid milk is further strained and ultrafiltered, then ultra-high-temperature processed and aseptically packaged. Finberg said it remains shelf stable for up to nine months unopened.

The result has 50% more protein and 50% less sugar (lactose) than regular milk, along with 6 grams of prebiotic GOS fiber created as an enzyme breaks down some of milk’s lactose.

Chobani currently makes Super Milk in Twin Falls and has donated it to food banks around the country, including during disaster relief after the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene remnants in Asheville, North Carolina.

“We will be introducing this to the marketplace, thanks to Allentown,” Finberg said.

The plant is expected to begin producing its first products next year, with more to follow as Chobani installs equipment and ultimately builds out 10 production lines.

Asked about other products, including the “dirty soda” trend with flavored creamers, Finberg pointed to things Chobani is already doing while keeping future Allentown plans close to the vest.

“Enjoy that root beer float and dirty soda, as it were. We will continue to have flavored coffee creamer,” he said.

He cited Chobani’s limited-edition ube creamer — flavored with the purple yam popular in Filipino foods — as one example. “No spooky ingredients,” he quipped of the Halloween offering.

As for Super Milk, “I think it’s just going to be regular milk to begin with,” Finberg said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll do sparkling milk or chocolate or other stuff down the road, but that’s not the immediate plan.”

Protein, schools and accessibility

The current Super Milk is low-fat, but Finberg said Chobani is discussing 2% and whole milk versions, citing specifically Congressman Glenn “GT” Thompson’s 15-year effort to restore the whole milk option to schools that resulted in passage of Whole Milk for Healthy Kids.

Chobani already sells yogurt into school breakfast and lunch programs.

“We will sell this everywhere, and schools will be part of that,” he said of Super Milk, noting USDA changes would be needed. “Keeping a price point for a premium product as low as we can and getting it into schools and food banks and other places like that is absolutely a priority.”

Finberg pointed to the Nourish New York program, which uses state funds to purchase New York-produced food for food banks, and Michigan incentives for locally produced foods in school meals as models Pennsylvania could consider to help on the cost side.

“If Pennsylvania has something similar, we’ll provide our best pricing for stuff like that to get it into schools as much as we can,” he said.

Center for Dairy Excellence Executive Director Jayne Sebright brought the product discussion back to the farm.

With protein becoming such a strong consumer trend, she asked whether Chobani could eventually offer additional incentives for farmers to produce higher-protein milk.

According to Tony Nassar, who leads Chobani’s dairy procurement efforts across the country: “Everything’s on the table. As you know, we pay for protein. We don’t buy milk, we buy components. So the more protein in the milk, the more we pay for it.”

Nassar said Chobani would look at further incentives for dairies to potentially increase milk protein. The comment tied together several strands of the discussion.

Chobani built its flagship product by concentrating milk into higher-protein Greek yogurt. It had been selling the resulting cream “per ton,” as Finberg put it, before turning some of that component into another growing dairy business, the growing line of flavored coffee creamers.

Super Milk further concentrates milk’s protein while reducing its lactose. And the new Pennsylvania plant is being equipped specifically to give the company room for the next products.

Nassar also put more detail around how Chobani will buy Pennsylvania milk.

“We’re going to purchase milk from cooperatives, not direct source,” he said. “We’re going to pay those components that’s related to the finished product.”

Chobani expects to buy both Class I and Class II milk and is currently negotiating premiums with the cooperatives that will supply it.

Sebright observed that the class utilization itself is important for Pennsylvania and the surrounding Federal Order market.

“Having more milk in the region shift to Class I and Class II away from Class IV will be helpful to the pricing equation,” she said.

“The goal is 100% of the milk to come from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Nassau.

At full buildout, the plant is projected to purchase more than 3 billion pounds annually, equivalent to roughly 30% of Pennsylvania’s current production at scale.

Finberg said Chobani is working with Land O’Lakes, Dairy Farmers of America and other dairy cooperatives to put that supply together.

Sebright noted that the deadline for applications for CDE productivity and excellence grants, already underway prior to this announcement, is Nov. 1, 2026 to invest in production enhancements on the farm. That’s the tip of the iceberg coming as part of the deal with Chobani was for Pennsylvania to invest in its dairy farms.

Officials discussed the 3-billion-pound challenge, farm reinvestment and growth, $127 million in identified state resources for dairy farms, cooperative sourcing and premiums — and why officials say landing the plant is the starting line, not the finish line.

That is where the next part of Pennsylvania’s Chobani story begins: How to produce billions of additional pounds profitably, where the public and private investment will come from, and what it could all mean for farms of different sizes across the Commonwealth. See Part II from the informative call in a future Farmshine.