GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The Gustafson’s milk brand and product line will continue, Southeast Milk Inc. officials announced Thursday although the cooperative is closing the 105-year-old dairy’s Green Cove Springs processing plant.
Thirty-six employees will lose their jobs when the plant closes Oct. 11. The dairy at 4169 County Road 15-A, in unincorporated Clay County, once was one of the Southeast’s largest family-owned and operated dairy distributors. In 2004, Southeast Milk, a dairy cooperative based in Belleview, bought the dairy that Frank and Agnes Gustafson, affectionately known as Mama and Papa Gus, founded with a “bossy lady” cow named Buttercup in 1908.
“The Gustafson’s brand and unique family of products will continue to be packaged and marketed through another plant owned and operated in Florida by Southeast Milk Inc. … A change in customer demand necessitated the closure,” said Patricia Pellegrini Fogler, cooperative human resources director, in an email Thursday morning to the Times-Union.
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