According to the Portage Fire Department, fire crews reported heavy smoke and fire from the roof of the dairy plant.
Sarah Schmidt, vice president of marketing at AMPI, says that employees were immediately evacuated, and no one was injured.
“The fire was quickly contained to the second floor — it was successfully extinguished during the night,” Schmidt says.
Although the fire department shared that the butter runoff and heavy smoke slowed access to the structure. Crews were on the scene until 3 a.m. Tuesday.
The fire department noted that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources would visit the plant Tuesday to assess the butter runoff. Members of the Portage Hazmat Team had attempted to keep the runoff from going into storm sewers and into the canal.
Schmidt shares that the AMPI team will be able to enter the building following the arrival of the department of criminal investigation this morning.
“The clean-up process will begin as soon as possible,” she says.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
AMPI is the largest cheese cooperative based in the U.S. They have 1,400 farm families and nearly 1,000 employees. In 2020, AMPI marketed 4.7 billion lbs. of milk, resulting in $1.8 billion in sales. The dairy farmer-owned cooperative has eight plant locations total, including Blair, Wis., Freeman, S.D., Hoven, S.D., Jim Falls, Wis., New Ulm, Minn., Paynesville, Minn., Sanborn, Iowa and Portage, Wis.
