It hasn’t been a happy new year for El Centro, California-based Imperial Valley Cheese, which has ceased operations because of a downturn of production and not being able to achieve economies of scale, journalist Antoine Abou-Diwan reported in the Imperial Valley Press. Receiving enough milk to produce its cheeses also became a challenge.
The company, a partnership formed in 1999 between Gossner Foods and KF Dairy, was the remaining producer of Swiss and Muenster cheeses in the Golden State. With its closure on Dec. 31, production shifted to another Gossner facility, while the company’s 16 employees were offered jobs at other Gossner Foods' locations. None of them, however, have elected to relocate, the paper reported.“'When they located in El Centro, I think the idea with the partnership … Jim Kuhn and others were going to grow the milk supply base in Imperial Valley,’” Bill Schiek, an economist with the Dairy Institute of California, told the paper. “Kuhn’s death and the closure of KF Dairy earlier this year, however, dealt a huge blow to Imperial Valley Cheese’s supply chain.”
Dealing with the byproduct whey also caused some problems, as the company was not big enough to justify building a whey dryer, Schiek said. Meanwhile, Bullfrog Farms, which delivered milk to Imperial Valley Cheese, has new customers. PD
—Summarized by PD staff from cited source
