Tillamook Ice Cream – the fastest-growing family size ice cream brand in the United States – is now officially in production at the newly unveiled Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA) manufacturing facility in Decatur, Illinois.

As TCCA’s first owned-and-operated manufacturing site outside of Oregon, the plant opening this summer marked a milestone in the 116-year-old farmer-owned co-op’s national expansion.

R&FF was on hand for the ceremonial “first scoop” in June.

“This is an exciting step forward for our co-op, and we are energized by the new opportunities that the Decatur manufacturing plant opens for TCCA,” said David Booth, president and CEO of TCCA. “Decatur offers strategic access to our growing customer and consumer base, and we hope this new production facility will help enable Tillamook to become the ice cream of choice for consumers in the Eastern United States.”

Tillamook has been making ice cream since the 1940s but was a regional brand until “in 2017, we went national,” Booth said. “It was time everyone got to enjoy our brand.”

Of the 27 million gallons sold last year, the majority were sold in the Eastern half of the U.S., he said.

Tillamook’s New Illinois Ice Cream Plant is Full of Firsts

Mike Bever, EVP of Supply Chain at Tillamook, discusses new Illinois factory.

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Legacy Site, Tillamook County Culture

TCCA uses a mix of owned/operated production sites and contract manufacturers. Unlike its Oregon site, which manufactures ice cream and cheese products, the Illinois plant is the first in the company dedicated solely to ice cream.

The nearly 100-year-old building was previously owned by Prairie Farms, which also used the location for ice cream production before closing three years ago.

When TCCA executives first visited the site in summer 2022, they were “overwhelmed” by both the amount of work needed and the property’s potential, said Mike Bever, executive vice president and chief supply chain officer at TCCA.

Tillamook spent nearly $70 million upgrading “almost every system in the plant,” Bever said, comparing the plant to an episode of classic home improvement TV show, “This Old House.”

TCCA added automation, including areas like flow metering and packaging, with ice cream carton formers and robotic palletizing. What was once a windowless storage room on the upper floor now houses an employee breakroom with natural light and an open kitchen.

The facility also includes a food safety lab and QA areas, with about 1,000 pallets of onsite cold storage.

“We're really driving efficiency of each of those systems,” Bever said. “So, whether it's HVAC, whether it's compressed air, obviously, all of the lighting throughout the building is all … upgraded in a way to make this plant as efficient as possible. The outside envelope of the building is … upgraded to increase R-value.”

The Decatur facility represents a significant investment in the company’s growth strategy, expected to produce over 15 million gallons of ice cream annually once it reaches full production capacity.

The 60,000-square-foot ice cream manufacturing facility will eventually ramp production to produce all the brand’s 30+ flavors, with milk sourced from Illinois dairy farms.

The process starts with twin 20,000-gallon milk tanks that will become one of three ice cream bases: vanilla, chocolate, or dark chocolate.

“At Tillamook we add just enough air so it’s still really creamy but really light,” said Steve Marko, senior director of Research & Development at TCCA.

Once the base is made and chilled to about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, inclusions and flavors are added and mixed before the finished product is packaged and sent to a spiral freezer. (Tillamook uses blast freezing for its 3-gallon foodservice size.)

The plant’s two production lines are each capable of filling about one 48-ounce family size container per second, Marko said.

The company’s Morning Star ship logo – in honor of the boat that first carried the Oregon dairy farmer’s products to the Portland and Astoria markets – shines like a beacon from the building’s exterior at night. A rendition of the ship has appeared on Tillamook packaging for decades.

In alignment with the co-op’s commitment to community enrichment, TCCA and the project’s general contractor, JP Cullen, committed $50,000 in donations to four Decatur area non-profits.

The production facility created over 50 new jobs in Decatur. Collectively, TCCA employs about 1,100 people who make ice cream, cheese, butter, yogurt, frozen meals and more.