The Commonwealth-Ehrmann dairy partnership makes Greek yogurt on a big scale. Franklin Foods makes Greek cream cheese. Making yogurt calls for milk. Making cream cheese calls for milk and cream.
And that calls for cows, lots of cows.
The Casa Grande Valley has them, said Dennis Dugan, a Casa Grande dairyman and a board member of the United Dairymen of Arizona.
“There’s about 90,000 milk cows within 30 miles of Casa Grande and that’s one reason they came here,” Dugan said.
They being Commonwealth Dairy and Franklin Foods. They both selected Casa Grande for new dairy-product plants. Nearly ready for business, the plants
bookend The Property Conference Center on West Gila Bend Highway, also known as Arizona 84.
They’re different companies, but they have a few things in common. Both have chosen Casa Grande to make high-end dairy products for a new market — the West. In both cases, they’re expanding by taking something of a transcontinental leap. Both have dairy- product plants in Vermont.
In 2011, Commonwealth Dairy opened a yogurt plant in partnership with Ehrmann in the southern Vermont city of Brattleboro. Franklin Foods has a cream cheese facility in Enosburg Falls, Vt., just miles from the Canadian border. The company’s headquarters is in Delray Beach, Fla.
How Commonwealth and Franklin ended up in Casa Grande is a story of more than cows. It’s a story of dairy- men looking for more markets. Of city officials working to meet the infrastructure needs of the new plants — including a new sewer line. Of a business foundation that helped to create a glide path for their move to Casa Grande. Of neighbors welcoming what they saw as clean industry.
Of dairy plant owners looking for markets west of the Mississippi. Of the promise of good-paying jobs, as many as 200.
It is, it happens, an unlikely story.
“Frankly, Arizona wasn’t on the list initially,” said Ben Johnson, chief financial officer of Commonwealth Dairy.
