Plymouth-based Sartori Foods Corp. has broken ground on a 115,000-square-foot cheese converting facility. The building will be the first tenant in Plymouth’s new South Industrial Park and is being constructed on a 25-acre parcel with significant expansion room, said Jim Sartori, president and chief executive officer.
The company expects to begin working at the new plant in December.
The new facility will slice, shred, dice, grate and cut the cheese that Sartori Foods produces in its four cheese plants, Sartori said.
"The cheese converting plant is a hub of activity – all of the other facilities feed into it," Sartori said. "It converts the cheese, takes the cheese we manufacture and adds value. And the greatest growth we have is going with converting and value-adding products."
Most of the cheese that Sartori Foods slices or shreds to is sold to specialty retailers such as Whole Foods or restaurants.
Sartori Foods makes cheese in three plants in Wisconsin and one in Idaho. The new cheese converting facility is the company’s fourth new facility in the last three years. It acquired two plants from Antigo Cheese in 2006 and a blue cheese and gorgonzola production plant in Linden in 2005, Sartori said.
The company already operates an existing cheese converting facility in Plymouth, which it will maintain when the new facility opens. The new facility will have new, state-of-the-art machinery, equipment and designs, Sartori said.
"Each (production) line will be segregated and separated, allowing each to be cleaned individually so there is no cross contamination," he said. "The cheese wedging will incorporate new technology, mostly to do with packaging, which will be a more artisan, European style packaging."
Much of Sartori Foods’ growth is coming from its recent entry into the specialty retail business, Sartori said. Until several years ago, the company sold its cheeses primarily to the food service industry and to packaged food preparers.
The new production plant has enough space to be quadrupled in size over the next 10 to 15 years, Sartori said.
"We’ve designed future phases – we have a dynamic, growing business, and we don’t want to be landlocked as we are at some of our older facilities," he said.
