$900M dairy plant with 200 jobs fires up in Eastern WA. Biggest in the Northwest

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Darigold launched operations at its $900M Pasco plant, six months behind schedule.

The facility processes 8M pounds of milk daily into butter and powdered milk.

Member farmers face cut payments as Darigold offsets project cost overruns.

Somewhere in the Mid-Columbia on Monday, dairy cows were milked, as usual.

The milk was collected in tanker trucks, as usual.

Then — unusually — the trucks detoured to north Pasco, where Darigold Inc.’s massive new processing plant was waiting for its first shipment.

Darigold, the Seattle-based processing and marketing arm of the Northwest Dairy Association, confirmed it processed its first shipment of milk June 2 amid ongoing construction.

The 500,000-square-foot new butter and milk powder plant on Railroad Avenue is t