St. Johns, MI

MWC, LLC (Glanbia Nutritionals)

Design-Builder

Shambaugh & Son, L.P.

Client

MWC, LLC (Glanbia Nutritionals)

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Services Provided

  • General Construction
  • Process Water
  • Mechanical
  • Refrigeration
  • Electrical
  • Automation Engineering
  • Fire Protection
  • BIM Integration
Exterior view of the new 400,000 MWC Glandia Nutritionals cheese processing plant in St. Johns Michigan

Value Delivered

Shambaugh designed and constructed the building shell and support utilities for the new 400,000-square-foot cheese processing and whey drying facility. Shambaugh delivered the project through a Design-Build, open-book, guaranteed maximum price delivery method.

In addition to general contracting, Shambaugh integrated the facility’s third-party process equipment, and self-performed mechanical, electrical, fire protection, and select process and automation scopes.

Client Objectives

MWC, a joint venture between Glanbia plc, Select Milk Producers, Inc., and Dairy Farmers of America, sought to construct this new processing facility in Michigan, which receives and processes 8,000,000 pounds of raw milk each day.

Solutions

Shambaugh’s scope of work included:

  • Building
    • 340,000 cubic yards of imported fill and stone
    • 34,000 square yards of asphalt paving
    • 4.5 miles of site utilities
    • 1,480 50-foot-deep auger cast piles
    • 20,000 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete
    • 2,100 pieces of precast
    • 3,150 stainless steel embed plates
    • 900 embedded-precast electrical boxes
    • 800 tons of structural steel
    • 145,000 square feet of vitrified tile
    • 60,000 square feet of resinous flooring
    • Over 25 miles of sealants
       
  • Mechanical and refrigeration installation
    • Over 500,000 pounds of stainless-steel hanger frames
    • Four-plus miles of underground process waste
    • 21-plus miles of utility piping
    • A 3,600-boiler-horsepower steam system
    • A 33,000-gallon chilled glycol system with 3,000 ton-refrigeration cooling
    • An over-one-million-gallon-per-day reverse osmosis plant and a 500,000-gallon holding tank
    • A 550-horsepower compressed air plant
    • 53 roof top units and 97 exhaust fans
    • Six 600 ton-refrigeration ammonia compressors
    • A 60,000-pound ammonia charge
       
  • Electrical and controls installation
    • Eleven 3,000-amp service entrances
    • 2,500 light fixtures
    • 15 electrical rooms
    • 34 800-amp motor control centers
    • 900 variable frequency drives
    • 20,000 linear feet of cable tray
    • 550,000 linear feet of tray-related power cable
    • 250,000 linear feet of category 6 data cable
    • 20,000 linear feet of fiber
    • 2.3 million linear feet of building wire
    • 41 control enclosures
    • Two 16-port fiber Ethernet switches
    • Six 48-port Ethernet switches
    • Twelve 24-port Ethernet switches

Shambaugh modeled 100 percent of the project, integrating models from five major process vendors and producing a federated model used in planning and during construction for a completely pre-planned installation. The plant produces approximately 850,000 pounds of cheese in 40 and 640 lb. blocks each day and processes around 11,000 pounds of concentrated whey per hour, drying and packaging powders in 20kg and bulk bags. In total, the plant processes approximately 25 percent of the total milk produced in the state of Michigan and was the largest piece of a billion-dollar investment in the Michigan dairy industry.

Client Background

MWC, LLC is a dairy manufacturing joint venture between Glanbia plc, Select Milk Producers, Inc., and Dairy Farmers of America. 

This plant is meant to serve a global community and is purely one of the most advanced dairy facilities anywhere in the world.” Tom Tench, COO Glanbia Nutritionals.