10/26/05 Gossner Foods to begin cheese production

In a just a few days Gossner Food employees at Heyburn will begin to make Swiss cheese. Gossner is the Utah-based company that built the 150 thousand square foot building on the site of the old Simplot French fry plant. Company president Delores Wheeler says their third Western plant is their biggest and best. WHEELER "I think the plant was built right. Our plant here in Logan we've added onto many time, and well, if we had it to go over again this is what we would do. A lot of it was older construction and you can't always do what you want to so up there it was really fun to work with people down here and say 'we need to do this, we need to do that.' So I think its done right this time as much as possible, there's always things you'll change as time goes on." To begin with Gossner will need 500 thousand pounds of milk every day so that it can produce 265 pound blocks of Swiss cheese. Wheeler says the goal is to use one million pounds daily with a workforce of 50 to 60 people. WHEELER "A lot of the packaging will be done right there at the facility in Heyburn and some of it will be brought down here to slice and after that it will go all over the nation." With the opening of the Heyburn plant Gossner is probably the nation's largest Swiss cheese maker. Wheeler is often asked if she's excited about the Idaho facility. Her answer, 'wait to January.' More about that tomorrow. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott