Blackwell Dairy Farm hoping to be back in business by September

May 4, 2018 | 5:05 PM

KAMLOOPS — The sounds of construction echo out over Blackwell Dairy Farm. 

On one fateful night in June 2017, operations at the dairy farm were brought to a standstill. 

A fire broke out at the processing plant, completely destroying the building. 

Now, the business is just months away from having its products back on store shelves. 

“It’s been a long process,” said owner Ted Blackwell. “June the 15th til now. I was hoping to be up and running last year.”

However, Blackwell says construction on the new processing plant is right on schedule. 

“We hope to be testing out equipment in August, and we’re going to be up and running in September,” he said. “It takes quite a while to do the testing, everything has to be perfect.”

While the new facility is being built upon the same foundation, it will include a number of improvements.

“We’ve streamlined the plant, made it a little bit more efficient, changed a little bit of the processing operation from cold milk separating and standardizing to straight streamline hot milk separating.”

Blackwell says he’s always remained hopeful the business would be back up and running quickly, but it’s help to have the community support. 

“If you can believe everything they say, and we do. I think they’re waiting for our milk to come out,” Blackwell said. “I don’t know what they’ve done in the meantime, but they all especially relate to our chocolate milk and our eggnog, and I think our eggnog will be going on production early this year just for that reason.” 

Even with insurance, Blackwell says the business took a significant financial hit. However, he says all employees are planning to return, and business will go back to usual. 

“Provided we get back up and running properly, we’ll be okay.”