Mat-Su’s got milk, and options

PALMER — A local man who delayed his plan for a private dairy operation here through attempts to keep the state-subsidized Matanuska Maid Dairy afloat said he’s still moving forward and will begin bottling locally produced milk next year.

Rob Wells said his Alaska Natural Milk brand should hit store shelves no matter what happens with Mat Maid, which is on the market to be sold. In July, Wells said he would not proceed with his $475,000 federally funded project if Mat Maid were still state-owned and in business. Now he’s convinced there will be enough willing milk suppliers to make his operation work.

“At the end of the day we just need to proceed on a separate track and do what we said we were going to do,” Wells said.

One advantage for pushing ahead with his new creamery is that it is going into an existing facility so it doesn’t have to be built from scratch. A previous opening target date of November has been pushed back until “sometime after the first of the year,” Wells said.

His plans are proceeding at a time when milk prices worldwide are spiking. The average United States price for a gallon of milk this month is $3.87, up from $3.29 a gallon in January 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports. New Orleans residents are paying $4.49 a gallon for milk.

Matanuska Maid’s milk prices in August 2007 when the state Creamery Board decided to sell the dairy were near $7 per gallon. The rising price of milk imported from Outside is part of Mat Maid’s pricing problem, members of the state Creamery Board have said.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Grant will fund Wells’ operation in a building across from the Alaska State Fairgrounds and, coincidentally, near the state’s Division of Agriculture office in Palmer.

“I’m confident we’ll have producers that will want to sell us milk,” Wells said.

There are four area milk producers, one of which bottles its own milk, Wells said.

“All we need is one,” Wells said, but he could accommodate all of them.

Alaska Natural Milk will be in the same price range as organic milk, which is on the high end of the milk market. He could not give a specific price. The milk won’t be organic, “but it’s going to be 100 percent Alaska in the carton and it’s going to be hormone -free.”

Wells said his operation could eventually produce organic milk.

Wells’ USDA grant was stalled first due to an appeal of the grant award by a marketing firm that had a proposal rejected by the agency, then by uncertainty over Matanuska Maid, Wells said. Gov. Sarah Palin in June replaced the state Board of Agriculture and Conservation — which oversees the Creamery Board and Mat Maid — and in turn the new board began managing the state-owned dairy in an attempt to keep the failing business afloat. Now the state is trying to sell the dairy.

The Alaska Farm Bureau’s Mat-Su chapter, which has had its own problems stemming from a state-initiated lawsuit over ownership of the “Alaska Grown” marketing logo, has followed the Mat Maid and Alaska Natural Milk saga closely. Wells is president of the Mat-Su chapter.

“It’s too bad [Wells] couldn’t have gotten started when the grant was announced,” said the chapter’s executive director, Karen Olson.

Wells is also a member of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly and is working to open his creamery along with Anchorage businessman Robert Gottstein, who will be a contractor in the Palmer venture.

Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or call 352-2270.