GREAT LAKES CHEESE• Headquarters: Hiram, Ohio• Sales: More than $2.2 billion• Existing plants: Eight facilities in Ohio, New York, Wisconsin and Utah• New plant: 330,000-square-foot plant to be built in Manchester, Tenn.• Ownership: 80 percent family owned and 20 percent employee owned. Forbes lists the company as the 214th largest privately held firm• Existing staff: 2,300 employees• Manchester staff: Initially 80 to 100 employees growing to 200 by 2019
A Manchester, Tenn., sod farm turned industrial park will soon be covered in cheese.
Great Lakes Cheese Co., announced plans Tuesday to build a $100 million cheese packaging plant in the Manchester Industrial Park, just a mile off of Interstate 24 about midway between Chattanooga and Nashville. The facility will be the fourth biggest among nine plants operated for the $2 billion-a-year cheese maker. It also will be the largest one-time investment ever in Coffee County.
Construction of the 330,000-square-foot cheese processing plant – the size of nearly six football fields – will help Great Lakes Cheese expand its capacity and better serve the South, company officials said. The Manchester plant will not produce any cheese, but it will serve as a packaging plant where cheese will be cut, sliced, shredded and packaged for shipment throughout the Southeast.
“This strategically positions our supply chain to give us a Southeast distribution that we don’t now have,” said Lisa Schechterman, marketing manager for Great Lakes Cheese.