Truckloads of stainless-steel piping and equipment began arriving this month at a massive fairlife milk processing plant being built in Webster.
In sheer size the 110-acre project site off Basket Road on the east edge of town is something to behold.
“I mean, really damn big is a good way to put it,” said Chris Rollag, site superintendent with general contractor Haskell.
The shell of the plant can be measured in football fields and was erected in six months’ time; built with 400 concrete wall sections cast on site and raised into place by a 660-ton crane.
On the north end is a warehouse, nine stories tall, where robots and cranes will load and unload the milk and other products.
Fairlife is owned by Coca-Cola and has quickly become a billion-dollar enterprise. In Webster, they plan to make Core Power protein shakes, Nutrition Plan meal replacement shakes, and milk, which is ultra-filtered and produced in such a way that it is high protein, low sugar and lactose free.
From the outset, officials have heralded this project and its initial $650 million price tag as the largest, single industrial development in the history of Monroe County. A lot of that has to do with the spending on high-tech processing equipment. But when the plant opens, likely at the end of next year, it promises to be the largest milk processing plant in the northeastern United States.
And all of it was to be built by local labor.
That was the contingency for the project to receive $63 million in tax breaks from Monroe County.
Since construction started, however, things changed.
Fairlife has sought at least 10 waivers and gotten county approval for nine (one was denied), allowing the company and its contractors to hire a combined 200-plus workers from outside the area. Fairlife's initial estimate was that 500 construction workers would be needed to build the plant.
The turnabout has upset local trade unions. And it’s gotten County Executive Adam Bello more personally involved in negotiations than he has on any other project.
“It's an issue of fairness,” Bello said. “If you're going to offer tax incentives and property tax abatements ... in return, they should be looking to invest dollars that they have into the local workforce, into local labor and utilizing local contractors.”
But long-term impact is also a factor, he added: “These projects have a rippling impact across the economy.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul separately committed $21 million in state tax credits to the project, but with no local labor requirements attached. Monroe County is one of the few jurisdictions in New York state with a 100% local labor policy — defining the local labor market as Monroe, Genesee, Livingston, Orleans, Ontario, Seneca, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates counties. But it wasn’t written with these mega projects in mind.
“We get very caught up on the next 12 months, right? And building the factory,” said fairlife’s Ed Burger, who is overseeing the development.
He argued the true impact — on the community and local economy — is not in the construction, but what comes after.
Finding middle ground
“The silos are what's missing at the moment ... the stainless-steel milk silos,” Burger said, looking over the construction site on a weekday last month.
There will be 70 silos in all, placed at the south end of the plant. The massive, towering facilities should start arriving this month, he said, hauled here from Syracuse – some so big they might not be allowed on the Thruway.
Installation begins next week on a cobweb of piping and equipment that will fill the inside of the plant. It’s more than what goes into a typical dairy plant, Burger said, and utilizes cutting edge technology assembled from Japan, Europe and different parts of the U.S.
This is where things recently got tricky.
Fairlife sought a local labor exception for the installation work. And the unions balked.
“We built Kodak. We built Xerox. We built Bausch & Lomb,” said Joe Morelle Jr., who leads UNICON, a partnership of local unions and contractors. “We know how to do specialized stainless-steel piping.”
But fairlife argued that this is the cornerstone of their brand. It’s all specialized equipment from a Swiss supplier and needs to be installed by specialized workers to ensure the warranty. There are a handful of reasons to grant a waiver, and warranty is one.
“There's proprietary information that they don't want to get out, which is fair,” Morelle said. “I don't think we have an issue with that. But there's a lot of work that isn't proprietary that our folks can perform.”
The county has been here before.
Amazon. LiCycle. All huge projects that, for one reason or another, sought exemptions to its 100% local labor requirement.
On fairlife, Bello tried to find a balance.
“This particular package was really the heart of the of the facility, right?,” he said. “This is what makes the magic behind fairlife. ... But we came to a great resolution.”
Typically, the decision on an exemption is yes or no. This time it was somewhere in between: Hire some of your own people but ensure at least some of the work stays local. That was a first, Bello said of splitting the work. It was possible in part because the contract is so big. Morelle put it at $45 million and 60 jobs.
The compromise could become a model for these large-scale projects going forward. And the deal allowed Bello to appease the unions, while still projecting a business-friendly image for the county. Fairlife and county officials insist that the vast majority of work will be awarded to local contractors, and performed by local workers.
Show me the money
On a recent weekday, some 230 construction workers were busy on site. Most of them local, according to fairlife.
“Currently, right now, we're working 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, seven as necessary, if some of the trades want to come in,” said Rollag, the general contractor superintendent.
Fairlife is building what might ordinarily be a three-year project in two years. And for good reason. Its two existing plants in Arizona and Michigan were at capacity when site selection for this plant started back in 2022.
“It'll almost double the capacity of our current business,” Burger said of the Webster plant. “So this site alone will just about be the same size as both of our existing sites.”
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey boasted of the brand’s growth during a recent earnings call, while also addressing the capacity crunch — telling investors: “Clearly, it’s going to be hard to cycle this year’s numbers until we get that capacity. But I think there's huge opportunity and demand in the marketplace.”
The first of three production lines is expected to come online at the end of next year. The other two will follow quarterly. Then it will take a full 18 months to bring the plant to capacity, running 24/7, capable of taking in 6.5 million pounds of raw milk daily.
An additional two lines could be added, bringing capacity to 10 million pounds.
For comparison, a new $600 million Darigold dairy plant slated to open next year in Washington state will process 8 million pounds of milk per day.
“On full build out,” Burger said, “you wouldn't find a larger liquid milk plant with this kind of technology in the U.S. It'll be one of the largest globally, I suspect.”
The investments don’t end with the plant itself.
All those delivery trucks, coming and going, will exit or enter Route 104 at Salt Road. The town of Webster plans to build a road connecting Salt and Basket roads – effectively extending Boulter Industrial Park through what is now Xerox property, Burger said.
Fairlife also is building a wastewater treatment plant on site. Raw milk is 87% water and, after the ultra-filtering process, the plant will have water leftover as a byproduct. Some of that will be reused, as all equipment must be washed down and cleaned every 24 to 72 hours.
What is discharged from the site will be effectively to the same standard as what comes from a house, Burger said. But a lot more. Up to 2 million gallons a day, town officials said. For perspective, the current plant has a daily capacity of 5 million gallons and averages 3.1 million.
Webster was already planning a $44 million sewer plant upgrade. That became an $81 million undertaking. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in April that the state would cover $20 million of the cost. And fairlife agreed in September to a $21.9 million “tie-in fee” to be paid to the town over the next decade.
Separate from all of this — but critical — are the $30 million in electrical upgrades needed to power the site. Those costs are similarly being offset by the state, fairlife and other sources.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
The Webster plant will require a staff of about 300 when fully operational. And Burger estimated that a plant this size would require $10 million to $15 million in yearly repairs and maintenance, and up to $10 million in annual upgrades.
This is the “what comes after” he is talking about.
It’s work for the local skilled labor and contractors the company is forging relationships with now:.
"You just get the efficiency,” Burger said. “They know the site, they know the people, they know the quality expectations, safety expectations.”
Morelle compared it to Eastman Kodak Co.
“What does it mean when you have these monster manufacturing facilities?” he asked. "I'm gonna pull you back a little bit to when ... hundreds of skilled trades workers were working every single day at Kodak. My grandfather included, who was a pipefitter.”
But the downturn of Kodak, of Xerox, he said, “that affects us. For many years we didn't have very good employment of skilled trades because the mega companies had left.”
Burger has been part of three similar projects to Webster, and he has seen the impact. Or as he put it: “What will spawn out of this place.”
“Existing businesses will grow, and new businesses will start,” Burger said. “Not just to support everything we need to run our facility, but to actually get the milk here.”
Dairy plants are typically built within 100 miles of the milk supply, he continued: “So you know, what we spend basically is just direct injection into the local community versus disappearing offshore, or out of state.”
