Cheese Manufacturing in the United States (NAICS 311513)

A Histometrics industry primer for public- and private-market investors.

1. Overview

Cheese manufacturing turns raw milk into natural and processed cheese — cheddar and mozzarella by the trainload, plus everything from string cheese and cream cheese to blue, feta, and brie. It is one of the largest food-manufacturing industries in the country by value of output: U.S. cheese plants shipped roughly $66.3 billion of product in 2022 [1]. The United States is the world's second-largest cheese producer after the European Union, making about 14.2 billion pounds in 2024 and 14.8 billion pounds in 2025 (~6.7 million metric tons), a 4.0% year-over-year increase [2].

Why an investor should care: cheese sits at the intersection of a defensive staple (people eat ~40 pounds each per year) and a volatile commodity (margins swing with milk and cheese prices). The catch is access. Despite the industry's size, there is no large U.S.-listed pure-play cheese manufacturer. The biggest makers are French family firms, Canadian dairy processors, farmer cooperatives, and employee- or family-owned private companies. Public-market investors reach the industry mostly through diversified or foreign-listed names; private-market capital enters through cooperatives, employee stock ownership, private credit to plant build-outs, and the upstream milk supply. This primer maps both routes.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 311513 covers establishments that manufacture cheese — natural cheese from raw or processed milk, and processed cheese (e.g., American slices, cheese spreads) made by remelting and blending natural cheese. It includes cheese made from cow, goat, and sheep milk, cheese substitutes made from soy or other nondairy substances, and the whey by-products captured alongside it [3].

What it excludes — several adjacent dairy codes an investor should not conflate with it:

• 311511 Fluid Milk Manufacturing (bottled milk, yogurt drinks, and notably cottage cheese)
• 311512 Creamery Butter Manufacturing
• 311514 Dry, Condensed, and Evaporated Dairy Product Manufacturing (milk powder, standalone whey-protein drying)
• 311520 Ice Cream and Frozen Dessert Manufacturing
• 112120 Dairy Cattle and Milk Production — the ~24,000 dairy farms that supply the milk are a separate industry upstream
• 424430 Dairy Product Merchant Wholesalers — distribution, not manufacturing

The production process. An industrial plant receives highly perishable milk, tests and standardizes its fat and protein, usually pasteurizes it, adds cultures and coagulating enzymes, separates curds from liquid whey, and salts, forms, presses, packages, or ages the curd. Cheese is extraordinarily milk-intensive: USDA's representative Cheddar calculation requires 10.3 pounds of milk for one pound of cheese and produces about 0.5 pounds of dry-whey coproduct [4]. Mozzarella and other high-volume foodservice cheeses emphasize continuous throughput and consistent melt, stretch, and browning. Cheddar and specialty cheeses may require aging, tying up refrigerated inventory and working capital.

Ownership mix. The industry is unusually diverse in who owns the plants:

• Farmer cooperatives owned by their milk producers — Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), Land O'Lakes, Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI), Agropur (Canadian). Profits flow back to member-farmers as patronage, not to outside shareholders [5].
• Private family firms — Leprino Foods (the world's largest mozzarella maker) [6], Sargento [7], Hilmar Cheese.
• Employee-owned firms — Schreiber Foods (reports more than $7 billion of annual company sales, including yogurt and beverages) [8] and Great Lakes Cheese (nine plants in six states, owned by the Epprecht family and more than 4,700 employee-owners) [9].
• Public / foreign-listed corporates — Saputo (Canada), Kraft Heinz, and Europe's Lactalis [10], Bel, Savencia, and Glanbia.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics (Histometrics ground-truth figures):

Two things stand out. First, this is capital-intensive, high-throughput manufacturing: about $1.09 million of output per employee and well over $100 million of shipments per plant on average [1][11]. A single modern plant can turn millions of pounds of milk into cheese every day. Second, the retail "cheese market" figures often quoted in the press (roughly $41 billion of consumer sales in 2025 [13]) measure something different and smaller than the $66 billion of total factory shipments — the shipments number includes bulk commodity cheese sold to food manufacturers and foodservice, not just grocery-shelf cheese.

Production mix. USDA NASS reported that Italian varieties accounted for 6.3 billion pounds in 2025, including 5.0 billion pounds of mozzarella. American types contributed 5.8 billion pounds, including 4.0 billion pounds of Cheddar. Wisconsin produced 24.6% of national output [2]. NASS also reported 2.8 billion pounds of processed cheeses, cheese foods, spreads, and cold-pack products — though natural and processed production should not simply be added because processed cheese consumes natural cheese, creating double counting [2].

Undercount caveat. The federal counts of 397 firms and 568 plants are a reasonably complete census of commercial-scale cheese plants, but they miss the long tail of artisan and farmstead cheesemakers — hundreds of very small operations, many seasonal, some counted under their dairy farm (112120) rather than here, and some too small to register with payroll. So the industry has more makers than 568 implies, even though those tiny makers add little to the dollar total. (USDA NASS received reports from 502 plants in 2025; the difference from Census's 568 reflects different reporting universes and definitions [2].) The bigger blind spot for investors is structural, not statistical: because so much of the volume runs through farmer cooperatives, much of the industry's economic value accrues to the ~24,000 upstream dairy farms and their member-owners, which sit in a different NAICS code entirely.

4. The investable universe

There is no clean, U.S.-listed pure-play. The table below separates the public routes from the large private and cooperative owners.

Public / listed (diversified or foreign)

Large private, employee-owned, and cooperative (not buyable as public shares)

Practical read for public investors: Saputo is the closest thing to a large-cap cheese pure-play you can actually buy, though it is diversified across dairy and family-controlled through a dual-class structure, and Kraft Heinz gives branded-cheese exposure inside a much broader food business (and its cheese platform is smaller after the 2021 Lactalis sale). Everything with real scale in commodity U.S. cheese — Leprino, Schreiber, the co-ops — is closed to public equity.

5. How the money works

Cheese economics are milk economics. Milk is roughly 60–70% of the cost of making cheese, and it takes on the order of 10 pounds of milk to make a pound of cheese, so the whole business turns on one spread: the price of finished cheese minus the cost of the milk that went into it. The metrics that matter:

• The cheese-over-milk margin. Bulk cheesemakers are price-takers on both ends. Their milk input has a regulated minimum price (Class III, below), and their commodity output — 40-pound cheddar blocks — is priced off the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) spot market. When cheese runs ahead of milk, plants coin money; when milk runs ahead of cheese, margins vanish. Both are volatile: Class III milk averaged about $18.89/hundredweight in 2024 versus ~$17 in 2023 and ~$22 in 2022, while spot cheese swung from ~$2.11/lb in 2022 to ~$1.76 in 2023 [4][21].
• Whey is the second revenue stream. Every pound of cheese leaves behind whey. Modern plants no longer dump it — they dry and fractionate it into whey-protein concentrate and isolate, lactose, and permeate. High-protein whey earns premium, fast-growing "sports/health" nutrition prices, and whey economics frequently decide whether a commodity cheese plant is profitable. New plants are deliberately built as cheese-and-whey facilities (e.g., the MWC plant in St. Johns, Michigan processes ~8 million pounds of milk a day into block cheese and value-added whey protein) [22].
• Scale and capacity utilization. Cheese is a fixed-cost, run-it-24/7 business; unit cost falls with throughput. This is why the newest plants are enormous — Leprino's ~$1 billion Lubbock, Texas facility is designed to make over one million pounds of cheese a day [20]. Idle capacity is expensive, so utilization is a core margin lever. Losing a major retail or restaurant account can hurt margins disproportionately.
• The "make allowance." The federal milk-pricing formulas embed an assumed processing cost — the make allowance. USDA's amended cheese make allowance is $0.2519 per pound, excluding raw milk [23]. In June 2025 the allowance was raised from about $0.2003 to this level, improving processors' ability to recover costs (while lowering the minimum price paid to farmers) [24][25].
• Brand versus commodity. The margin structure splits sharply. Branded and specialty players (Sargento, Kraft/Lactalis, Bel's Babybel and Boursin) earn consumer-goods margins on packaging, snacking, and shelf position. Commodity and ingredient makers (barrel cheddar, mozzarella sold to pizza chains, private-label blocks) earn thin manufacturing spreads and live on volume and whey. Investors should not read one segment's economics onto the other.
• Public-company margin benchmarks. Saputo's U.S. segment (which includes cultured dairy and ingredients beyond cheese) reported C$8.755 billion of revenue and C$615 million of adjusted EBITDA in fiscal year 2025, a 7.0% margin; the company noted unfavorable milk-cheese spreads reduced EBITDA by C$42 million [26]. Glanbia's Dairy Nutrition segment (U.S. cheese plus higher-value whey proteins) reported $1.517 billion of revenue and $149.5 million of EBITDA, a 9.9% margin [17]. These are not pure cheese-manufacturing margins, but they illustrate the mid-to-high single-digit EBITDA typical of diversified dairy processing.
• The cooperative twist. For DFA, Land O'Lakes, and Agropur, "profit" is largely returned to member dairy farmers as patronage. The economic surplus is real, but it accrues to milk producers, not outside capital.

6. What drives demand

• Long-run per-capita growth. Americans eat near-record amounts of cheese — about 39.9 pounds per person in 2024, only slightly off 2023's record ~40.2 pounds and up from 29.8 pounds in 2000 [27]. The dip in 2024 was the first in years, but the trend line is up.
• Pizza and mozzarella. Mozzarella is the single most-consumed cheese (~12.5 lbs per person) and is tied directly to pizza demand and national chains [27]. This is why the largest single maker (Leprino) is a mozzarella specialist supplying quick-service pizza.
• Snacking and protein. String cheese, snack packs, and Babybel-style portions ride the high-protein, low-carb snacking trend — a tailwind for branded players.
• Foodservice and restaurant traffic. A large share of cheese moves through restaurants and foodservice, so demand tracks dining-out activity.
• Exports — now a critical growth driver. U.S. cheese exports hit a record ~508,800 metric tons in 2024, up 17% (~$2.5 billion), and then set another record in 2025: 613,045 metric tons, up 20%, with export volume exceeding 50,000 metric tons in eight of the year's twelve months — a threshold never reached in any month before 2025 [28][29]. Mexico alone represented $965 million of U.S. cheese exports in 2025 [29]. A growing share of new U.S. production is aimed abroad, making export competitiveness a genuine demand driver.
• Demographics and variety. Growth in Hispanic-style cheeses and specialty/premium varieties adds mix and margin. Imports (~473 million pounds in 2024, mostly Italian, French, and Spanish specialty) fill the high-end niche the U.S. under-produces [30].

Forward-looking demand watch-items (uncertain, not established fact): whether GLP-1 weight-loss drugs meaningfully dent per-capita dairy calories, and whether plant-based "cheese" — so far a small, underperforming niche — ever scales. (Note that nondairy cheese substitutes are classified within NAICS 311513, so some plant-based growth remains inside the statistical industry rather than being purely external competition [3].)

7. Regulation

• Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO). The dominant regulatory feature. USDA sets minimum prices processors must pay farmers for milk by end-use "class"; Class III is milk used to make cheese. In June 2025 USDA implemented the biggest FMMO overhaul in two decades: it dropped 500-pound barrel cheddar from the pricing survey so that only 40-pound blocks (the CME block price now covers ~90% of U.S. natural cheese) set the cheese benchmark, updated skim-milk composition factors, and raised make allowances [24][25][31]. Early estimates put the changes at roughly $337 million lower pool revenue to farmers, with a corresponding cost recovery shift toward processors [32].
• FDA standards of identity and food safety. Federal rules define what can legally be called "cheddar," "mozzarella," etc., set pasteurization requirements, and impose the 60-day aging rule for raw-milk cheeses [33]. Cheese facilities generally fall under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) preventive-controls rule, requiring written hazard analysis, monitoring, corrective action, verification, and environmental monitoring where appropriate [34]. Soft and fresh cheeses exposed after pasteurization carry Listeria recall risk — a ready-to-eat product that can support environmental contamination.
• Wastewater. EPA identifies dairy-processing wastewater sources including product losses, equipment cleaning, spoiled products, detergents, and pasteurizer start-up or shutdown. Regulated pollutants include biochemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, and abnormal pH; natural and processed cheese plants are covered by 40 CFR Part 405 [35]. Wastewater capacity is a material constraint on both existing plants and expansions.
• Trade. Under USMCA, U.S.–Mexico dairy tariffs remain at zero (Mexico is by far the top export market), while U.S.–Canada access phases in gradually [36]. A live friction point is the EU's push for geographical-indication protection on names like "parmesan," "feta," and "asiago," which U.S. makers use generically.
• Farm programs and promotion. Dairy Margin Coverage (a farm-side safety net) and the national dairy check-off (generic promotion) sit around the industry. Environmental rules on whey and wastewater disposal, plus labor and immigration enforcement, bear on plant operations.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The national picture looks fragmented — the top 4 firms make only about 28.5% of receipts, the top 8 about 47%, the top 20 about 72%, the top 50 about 91%, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration measure) is just 364, well inside the "unconcentrated" range [1][37]. But that national average is misleading, because the industry is really a set of concentrated segments: mozzarella is dominated by Leprino; processed cheese by Kraft/Lactalis and Schreiber; branded snack cheese by Sargento and Bel; and any given region's commodity cheddar by a handful of plants.

Two forces are reshaping it:

1. A historic capacity build-out. An estimated ~1.35 billion pounds of new natural-cheese capacity came online in 2024–2025, part of roughly $11 billion of dairy-processing investment redrawing the U.S. "milk map" — Leprino (Lubbock, TX), the MWC joint venture (St. Johns, MI), Great Lakes Cheese (Franklinville, NY), Agropur (Little Chute, WI), and others [22][38]. This is a bet on export and domestic growth; the risk is overshooting into oversupply.
2. Forward integration and roll-ups. Farmer cooperatives (DFA, Select Milk, Glanbia partners) are building their own cheese/whey plants to capture value on member milk; Saputo has grown for decades by acquisition; Lactalis bought its way into U.S. natural cheese in 2021; and even a retailer (Walmart) is building dairy processing. Private equity is comparatively scarce here — the business is capital-heavy and thin-margin.

9. Risks

• Price volatility. Class III milk and CME cheese both swing hard; a plant's margin can flip in a quarter. Contracts may reset with a lag, and inventories may carry older, higher-cost milk into a falling cheese market.
• Oversupply. The 2024–2025 capacity wave could depress cheese prices and compress margins if domestic and export demand don't absorb the new volume. Plant utilization increasingly depends on export competitiveness.
• Input and operating costs. Feed and energy costs feed into milk; labor availability (and immigration enforcement) affects plant staffing. California, Wisconsin, Idaho, New York, and Texas collectively supplied more than 65% of U.S. milk in 2024, creating scale advantages but also regional climate, water, and supply concentration [4].
• Food safety. A single contract plant may serve numerous brands, magnifying recall liability and reputational damage. Risks include Listeria (the highest-severity concern for ready-to-eat moist cheese), Salmonella, undeclared allergens, foreign material, inadequate pasteurization, cold-chain failure, and contamination during shredding or packaging.
• Workplace safety. BLS reported a 2024 total-recordable injury and illness rate of 4.3 cases per 100 full-time-equivalent workers in cheese manufacturing, including 3.0 cases involving days away, restricted work, or job transfer [39]. Refrigeration, wet floors, chemicals, repetitive work, machinery, and sanitation shifts all contribute.
• Trade exposure. With exports at record levels and heavily concentrated on Mexico, tariff disputes or retaliation are a direct demand risk; 2025's broader trade tensions add uncertainty.
• Animal health. The 2024 spread of H5N1 avian influenza into U.S. dairy herds introduced a new milk-supply and food-safety variable the industry had not faced before (developing situation).
• Health and diet shifts. Saturated-fat and sodium guidance, and the still-unquantified effect of GLP-1 drugs on appetite, are demand-side wildcards.
• Access risk (for investors specifically). The scarcity of investable public equity means most capital can only reach the industry indirectly; the 2019 bankruptcy of dairy processor Dean Foods is a reminder that low-margin dairy processing can destroy shareholder value even at scale.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes. The practical menu is short. Saputo (TSX: SAP; OTC: SAPIF) is the nearest large-cap cheese-heavy dairy processor available to public investors [15], and Kraft Heinz (Nasdaq: KHC) offers branded-cheese exposure within a diversified packaged-food company — though KHC sold its U.S. natural cheese business to Lactalis in 2021, so its remaining cheese platform (~$1.66B, 7% of sales) is a smaller slice than it once was [16][19]. Foreign-listed Glanbia (Dublin/London) carries U.S. cheese-JV plus whey/nutrition exposure [17], and Bel and Savencia (Paris) are branded-cheese plays with thin free floats and family control [18]. There is no U.S.-listed pure-play; broad exposure otherwise comes via packaged-food funds.

Private-market routes. This is where most of the real cheese scale sits. Access comes through: employment/ESOP participation at employee-owned makers (Schreiber, Great Lakes Cheese); membership in a farmer cooperative (DFA, Land O'Lakes) — which requires being a dairy producer; private credit and project finance into the current plant-construction wave; supplier, equipment, and industrial-real-estate positions around new plants; and agriculture/food private-equity funds targeting specialty and artisan brands. Upstream, farmland and dairy-farm exposure (including ag-focused REITs such as Gladstone Land and Farmland Partners) is an indirect way to own the milk supply that feeds the cheese vat. A private-equity underwriting should separate the cheese plant from the brand and test milk-supply security, customer concentration, index-pricing lags, utilization, food-safety history, wastewater headroom, maintenance capital, aging inventory, and coproduct realizations.

Near-term drivers to watch (forward-looking). In the near term, margins hinge on whether the large new capacity is absorbed by record exports and steady domestic demand or tips into oversupply and soft Class III prices. The June 2025 FMMO changes modestly help processors recover costs while pressuring farm-gate milk prices — a positive at the plant, a negative on the farm. Longer term, the demand backdrop is favorable: near-record per-capita consumption, the protein-snacking trend, pizza/foodservice, and export growth (2025's 20% jump shows how quickly the export channel can scale). The genuine uncertainties are trade policy, the durability of export demand, GLP-1's effect on appetite, and animal-health shocks like H5N1. Net: a large, defensive, cash-generative industry with a structural quirk — most of it is simply hard for public investors to own directly.

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Sources

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