Crescent Dairy & Beverages is set to invest more than $30 million to establish a new ultra pasteurized beverage processing facility in Colleton County, South Carolina. The initial production output of the facility, which will include an ultra-high-temperature (UHT) beverage processing equipment, is anticipated to be mainly for export markets.

Byrne Dairy hopes to build a yogurt plant and visitor center on a 127-acre site in Cortlandville, New York. The facility could bring 80 jobs at first and potentially hundreds more in the future. "If you're going to be in the dairy business and you're going to be in the business of making dairy products, you're going to need to be in the yogurt business in this country," said Byrne Dairy CEO Carl Byrne.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance has added to its board of directors and executive committee. Mark Etienne (Potash Corporation), Billy Frey (Alltech), Scott Oler (Vance Publishing Corporation), Paul Matzat (Genus/PIC) and Kathy Simmons (National Cattlemen’s Beef Association) recently joined the list of 27 board members. Jeff Cannon (Diamond V) and Jamie Jonker (National Milk Producers Federation) were added to the board’s executive committee. Current chairman Chris Ashworth (Elanco Animal Health) welcomed Paul Pressley (U.S. Poultry & Egg Association) as the alliance’s new chair-elect and Sherrie Niekamp (National Pork Board) as treasurer. Kristi Krafka, vice president of regulatory affairs and quality assurance for the animal nutrition and health division of Kemin in North America, will serve a two-year appointment as the chair of the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) Feed Regulatory Committee.

Mayfield Dairy Farms has announced that the company's visitor center in Braselton, Georgia, will reopen to the public on Friday, Nov. 9. The center has been closed since last fall while the company looked for ways to make it more economically viable.

The University of Wisconsin – River Falls, home to one of the largest undergraduate dairy science programs in the U.S., has announced a collaboration with China Agricultural University (CAU), located in Beijing. Both institutions are recognized as among the finest in their respective countries for quality and strength of programming in dairy science and related fields.

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The Pennsylvania Soybean Board has awarded a $5,000 grant to the Center for Dairy Excellence to reprint the “Something to Treasure” brochure. Originally produced in 2011, the educational piece showcases the many contributions dairy farm families make to their local communities and economy. More than 30,000 copies of the brochure were distributed in the past 12 months.

The National Dairy Foods Research Center program, supported in part by the Dairy Research Institute, marks 25 years of providing dairy, food and beverage companies with research, education, pilot facilities and technical assistance to improve and develop new products and dairy ingredients. America’s dairy farmers established the program in 1987 through the dairy checkoff. Today, there are six-university affiliated centers available to the industry at strategic locations across the U.S.