Upstate Niagara Membership - About Upstate Farms Cooperative

Lab & Membership Division: 7115 West Main Road, LeRoy, NY 14482
Phone: 1-800-724-MILK

About Upstate Niagara Cooperative, Inc.

Mission Statement: To serve customers with the highest quality dairy products in order to market milk and maximize returns for our dairy farm owners, while creating a rewarding environment for our employees.

Upstate Niagara Cooperative, Inc. is a “full service dairy cooperative” located in Western New York and is owned by the dairy farmers. In 2006, Upstate Farms Cooperative and Niagara Milk Cooperative consolidated to form Upstate Niagara Cooperative, Inc. This brought together two of the nation’s top dairy cooperatives to better serve their members and the dairy industry of New York.

Through the years, Upstate Niagara has been a manufacturer of high quality dairy products and has continued to grow by building its brands and offering consumers innovative value-added products. Upstate Niagara Cooperative’s Management Office is located in Buffalo. The Membership Division and the Centralized Member Laboratory are located in LeRoy.

Upstate Niagara Cooperative operates fluid milk processing plants in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Rochester, as well as a distribution center in Syracuse. Upstate Niagara manufactures a diversity of products in its plants under the Wendt’s Dairy label and the Upstate Farms® label, including: Intense™ Chocolate, Strawberry or Vanilla Milks, homogenized vitamin D milk, chocolate milk, low fat chocolate milk, 2% reduced fat milk, 1% low fat milk, fat free milk, buttermilk, half & half, heavy cream, light cream, eggnog, and 100% pure squeezed orange juice. Upstate Niagara also manufactures and distributes ice cream mixes and shake mixes to the food service industry throughout the Northeast.

As of April 2006, cultured products are processed in a new, state-of-the-art facility in West Seneca, NY. These include cottage cheese, sour cream, dips and yogurt. The Bison® and Upstate Farms® brands, as well as private label products, are manufactured and sold to customers throughout the USA in the retail, food service and industrial sectors.

In addition, Upstate Niagara Cooperative markets its members' milk to a number of Western New York fluid milk processors and cheese manufacturers.

Upstate Niagara Cooperative is the majority owner of O-AT-KA Milk Products Cooperative in Batavia, New York. O-AT-KA's primary role is to balance the fluctuating supply and demand for members' milk. It has also become an important value-added manufacturer of dairy products. Products manufactured by O-AT-KA at their Batavia plant include nonfat dry milk powder, buttermilk powder, whey powder, canned evaporated milk, butter, fluid condensed milk, iced coffee, nutritional beverages and other various ethnic drinks.