IN Brief:
- ABF Ingredients intends to buy land in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for a new Ohly site.
- The first phase represents an investment of around £47.8m.
- The facility will complement Ohly’s existing Boyceville manufacturing site.
ABF Ingredients is planning a major investment in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to support the growth of its Ohly ingredients business in North America.
The project will involve an initial investment of around £47.8m to construct a new facility, with nearly 30 jobs expected. ABF Ingredients intends to purchase land in Eau Claire for the development, which has been selected with future expansion in mind.
Ohly supplies specialty yeast extracts, yeast-based products, and flavour solutions. The business already operates a manufacturing site in nearby Boyceville, Wisconsin, and the planned Eau Claire facility will complement that footprint.
Construction is expected to be phased over several years. ABF Ingredients and Ohly are working with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and the City of Eau Claire on planning, permitting, and community engagement.
The investment reinforces Wisconsin’s position as a North American food and beverage manufacturing base, particularly for ingredient supply chains serving savoury, fermentation-derived, and flavour-led applications. It also gives Ohly additional capacity close to an existing operational base, reducing the complexity of building in a new region without a local skills and supplier network.
Ingredient companies are placing more emphasis on regional manufacturing after several years of disruption across freight, energy, raw materials, and customer lead times. Manufacturers using yeast extracts and flavour systems need reliable supply as well as technical support, particularly when products are being reformulated for salt reduction, plant-based formats, cleaner labels, or cost control.
Yeast-derived ingredients are used across savoury formulations, meat alternatives, soups, sauces, ready meals, snacks, and seasoning systems. They can support flavour depth, mouthfeel, umami character, and reduced-salt development, making them strategically important in categories where manufacturers need to maintain sensory quality while managing nutrition or cost targets.
The Eau Claire project gives ABF Ingredients a larger North American platform as demand for technical ingredients continues to evolve. A phased build also gives the business room to expand in line with market demand rather than committing all capacity at once.
Food manufacturers are asking more of their ingredient suppliers. Availability, technical service, quality consistency, and regional responsiveness now sit alongside innovation. Long lead times and fragile import routes are harder to absorb when an ingredient directly affects flavour, formulation stability, or finished product performance.
Wisconsin provides an established industrial base for the project, with food and beverage manufacturing, dairy, ingredients, and processing already embedded in the state. That ecosystem should support access to contractors, utilities, maintenance skills, regulatory familiarity, and process manufacturing talent.
The investment adds capacity, but it also adds resilience. Technical ingredients are becoming central to how manufacturers manage reformulation, value engineering, and product development. ABF Ingredients’ Wisconsin expansion places Ohly closer to customers in a market where speed, reliability, and formulation support are increasingly decisive.
