Construction is picking up on the Leprino Foods plant in east Greeley, a visible sign that the cheese maker is on the move and beginning to inject life into the region's sagging economy.
Work on the $270 million facility on the former Western Sugar site began in July — more than a year later than Leprino had hoped to break ground. Various issues — including asbestos removal from the old beet-processing plant, the large quantities of lime (sugar-beet processing byproduct) that needed to be hauled away, and the collapse of New Frontier Bank, which significantly reduced credit availability for dairy owners — pushed back the original construction timeline.
The first phase of the plant is now expected to be online in late 2011, with the full 847,000-square-foot facility, the second largest of Leprino's 10 U.S. plants, expected to be completed by late 2012.
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