The BelGioioso Cheese plant in Glenville is expanding again as part of a $23 million investment here and in Steuben County by the Wisconsin cheesemaker. BelGioioso will add 30 jobs between Glenville and Campbell.
LeChase Construction Services
BelGioioso Cheese is planning a $23 million expansion of its facilities in Glenville and Campbell in Steuben County. The Green Bay, Wis., company is known for its lines of Italian cheeses and mozzarella.
BelGioioso
SCHENECTADY — BelGioioso Cheese is investing $23 million to expand its cheesemaking facilities in Schenectady and Steuben counties.
The Green Bay, Wis., company, known for its lines of Italian cheeses and mozzarella, has been operating in the Capital Region since 2011, when it purchased the F. Cappiello Dairy cheesemaking plant on Van Guysling Avenue in Schenectady.
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BelGioioso built a second location on 40 acres at the Glenville Business and Technology Park with what was then a $25 million investment. That campus now includes a 100,000-square-foot cheese manufacturing building and a 120,000-square-foot distribution center.
Although BelGioioso still owns the Van Guysling Avenue building and still makes cheese under the Cappiello brand, it has since consolidated all of its operations into the Glenville campus, where 74 workers are employed. Old World Provisions, a maker of Italian foods, is the current tenant in the former Cappiello plant.
In 2023, BelGioioso acquired Polly-O, the Steuben County maker of Italian cheeses that is best known for its popular string cheese style mozzarella. That plant employs 96.
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As part of this latest round of investment, BelGioioso will spend $23 million and add 30 jobs between Glenville and Campbell, where the Polly-O plant is located. Distribution of Polly-O is also done out of the Glenville location.
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New York has offered BelGioioso $1.5 million in Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits. Schenectady Metroplex, the county’s economic development agency, awarded the company a $150,000 grant to support the expansion as well as sales tax exemptions on construction materials used in Glenville.
The two expansions are expected to be finished by 2027.
The state’s dairy industry, one of the largest in the U.S., will benefit from the deal as BelGioioso’s expansion plans call for purchasing an additional 100 million pounds of milk from New York farmers each year.
“New York’s dairy industry serves as a crucial economic engine for our state, and we are grateful to this successful company for its continued commitment to these communities, and to area dairy farmers, who always work hard to help position our state as one of the nation’s top dairy producers,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement announcing the expansion and the state’s involvement.
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The popularity of yogurt and other dairy products has led to a boom in yogurt and cheese manufacturing across upstate, where companies can be close to their milk supply. New York state has 3,000 dairy farms that produce 16 billion pounds of milk annually, ranking the state fifth nationally in terms of production.
In April, Chobani broke ground on a $1.2 billion factory in Rome in Oneida County, one of several other large investments in dairy production in New York.
“Today’s announcement marks their third major expansion bringing new construction work and good paying food production jobs to the Glenville Business & Technology Park,” Schenectady County Metroplex Development Authority Chairman Ray Gillen said.
Dining and Cooking