Karl Bitz, CNY Feeds President. Photo provided.
By Eric Jenks, Special to NEAFA
NEAFA would like to congratulate CNY Feeds on breaking ground on their new facility in Avon, NY – the first major expansion for the company, and the largest capital investment to date. “We started in Jordan, NY in 1990 with my father Mark Bitz, making turkey feed for our five-generation family farm – Plainview Turkey Farm,” said Karl Bitz, current President of CNY Feeds. “We sold Plainview Turkey in 2007, and we now solely focus on dairy feed.”
Bitz graduated from Cornell in 2009. “I worked general labor at the feed mill for a year after graduating,” said Bitz. “I then worked for a Silicon Valley tech company in DC for eight years, where I got married and we had two children. I decided that I wanted to do something different, to be closer to home. In 2018 our wonderful General Manager, Chip Hyde, was retiring. I came back to fill that role at CNY Feeds, and I’ve been here ever since. It’s honestly been great to be back in the family business. We’ve grown a lot since then; nearly double the production volume of when I first rejoined the company. Roughly, we feed around 125,000 cows across 90 farms in our service area.”
With that growth in production, their current location has some constraints. “Our facility was originally designed to make turkey feed,” said Bitz. “That’s a much simpler operation than dairy feed. Turkey mix might have 10 ingredients for example. An average dairy ration might have as many as 30 ingredients, and we carry 100 different ingredients for making different mixes as farms or nutritionists might require. We’ve added on and grown over time, but we’ve reached the constraints of the original design. The original mill’s maximum capacity was 30,000 tons of feed, and we did 250,000 tons last year. There’s still some room to grow, but limited. This major project allows us to expand with the industry. Dairy is growing across the state; this new facility, with its easy access to both rail and trucking, allows us to grow and unlock access to a new market of customers in Western New York. I wouldn’t be building if the industry wasn’t growing. It’s in such a different place than it was in 2018 when I came back to the company. Processing is growing, the dairy industry’s outlook is optimistic, and I’m confident that we can be successful in that kind of environment. It’s not without risk; we have good competition that we’re up against in the market. But we’re very technology forward from my software background, and we also have an old-fashioned mentality where customers can call me directly on the phone, and have us visit their farms. We compete on quality of service.”
3D Rendering of the new CNY Feeds Facility in Avon, NY. Image Provided
The new facility is located on a parcel of property that originally belonged to the Lakeville Avon Lavonia Railroad. “We bought a parcel from them that they were developing for rail customers,” said Bitz. “It’s right near a truck stop off of I-390 as well near Geneseo, so there are plenty of shipping options. Theoretically we can service anywhere, but distribution becomes prohibited at a certain distance. Our core customer base is the Finger Lakes Region currently. With new rail and trucking options, this opens up additional services to Wyoming, and Livingston counties. We do have customers in Western NY already, this just makes the economics much more viable and efficient. It’s not just about expanding capacity or the location though. This is going to be a state of the art, purpose-built facility for dairy feed. We’re already efficient, but having it built from the ground up for dairy will unlock new products and opportunities for our clients. It’s also going to generate new jobs. We currently have 26 full time employees, and we’ll be adding six or seven new people on day one, and upwards of fifteen once the facility is operating at full capacity.”