Clover expanding Petaluma dairy processing plant

The last of four gleaming, 50,000-gallon silos was moved into place last weekend at Clover Stornetta’s processing facility off Lakeville Street, a shining testament to the home-grown company’s expansion in Petaluma.

The tanks will boost the facility’s capacity and make it easier to manage the inflow of milk from both organic and conventional dairy ranches along the North Coast, said Ken Gott, chief operating officer.

Yet it is not the only significant project for Clover in Petaluma, with a 65,000-square-foot cold storage and distribution facility underway at the Cader Corporate Center off Cader Lane, he said.

Together, the two projects are meant to give Clover, an icon of the dairy belt spanning Sonoma and Marin counties, room to grow, he said.

“It’s two projects, both of which are almost overdue for our business here in Petaluma,” he said.

Anticipated to be completed in September, new tanks will increase the capacity at the Lakeville facility by 50 percent, to 600,000 gallons, Gott said.

The tanks will add to the amount of liquid milk the facility can take in, but will also make it easier to take silos offline for cleaning without significantly impacting day-to-day operations, he said.

“This will give us two silos to bounce back and forth to make sure everything is more simplified, more streamlined, to help us operate more efficiently,” said Michael Benedetti, director of plant operations and part of the family that has run Clover Stornetta for three generations.

The silos will also make it easier to bifurcate supplies of organic and conventional milk that come into the plant, a 24/7 operation, Gott said.

“Over the past two or three years, volume has grown significantly,” Gott said. “The fact that we have multiple types of milk, i.e. organic and conventional, it causes inefficiency when we have to, per federal guidelines, stop every so often and clean things out. In order to set ourselves up for growth and make us more efficient, these tanks are part of our long-term plan.”

The exact rate of growth wasn’t immediately available, but Clover today works with 30 ranchers around the North Coast, including 16 organic and 14 conventional farms, according to information from the company.

Storage for Clover occurs not only at the Lakeville plant, but at a number of outside locations in Penngrove and the city of Richmond, Gott said. The new Cader Lane facility will allow Clover to reduce that number to two locations, both within city limits.

“Even within our current operation, it allows us to operate much more efficiently. And having fewer trips back and forth between outside storage locations, it makes it much more environmentally friendly,” he said.

The new warehouse will have 13 bays for trucks, compared to the four doors available at the Lakeville plant, Benedetti said. The facility is expected to be completed in October of this year.

“The layout is much more improved,” he said.

Gott, the COO, said the projects wouldn’t necessarily mean an immediate rush in hiring for the company. Yet the increased elbow room could set the company up for growing its ranks in the future.

“Now that we’ve done the work that allows us to operate efficiently, it really allows us to start to grow,” he said.

The company currently distributes its products in six states – California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and Hawaii.

While Clover has staked a claim in product lines like ice cream and yogurt in recent years, Benedetti said raw milk remains Clover’s central pillar. The network of producers along the North Coast – featured prominently in profiles on the company website – are integral to the brand itself.

That regionally bound identity made expansion in Petaluma the best option, he said.

“Our milk supply is in Marin, Sonoma County, and we feel very strongly that supply is an important part of who we are. Petaluma is an ideal location for us to manage it,” Benedetti said.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)