Success Stories Economic Development

April 01, 2025

Tillamook Ice Cream Facility Expansion

Upgrading existing facility power and overcoming supply chain issues.

Identifying an Ideal Site in Illinois

When Oregon-based Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA) was searching for a Midwest site for a new ice cream production operation, company leaders zeroed in on an existing 57,000-squarefoot building located in Decatur, Illinois.

The former site of a Prairie Farms ice cream production plant was ideal due to its strategic Midwest location and proximity to a growing customer base, and it checked all the boxes from a space standpoint. However, significant upgrades—including additional power capacity—were needed to meet a tight 18-month schedule to get it ready for the first production run of Tillamook Ice Cream, the fastest-growing family-size ice cream brand in the United States.

Ameren Team Brought In to Evaluate Power Challenges

Among the challenges facing site planners, the existing 4kV electric service to the Decatur building was insufficient to power the electric load needed to run Tillamook’s processing machines. The Ameren Illinois economic development team was brought in to work with Tillamook operations leaders to assess the service upgrades required to meet the company’s expected load requirement of 3 MW from the base production operations and the addition of a new ammonia compressor room. The team determined that a new 34.5 kV service needed to be installed and the location of service points (where the power enters the facility) would need to be changed.

Supply Chain Constraints Hamper Project Timeline

When the Tillamook project was initiated in 2022, U.S. industrial expansions were slowed by supply chain constraints that limited the availability of key equipment needed for electric transmission construction. For Tillamook and Ameren Illinois, a bottleneck in acquiring 34.5 kV transformers threatened to delay efforts to make the new plant fully operational and meet the company’s production deadlines.

“When a company is making a significant job-creating investment in our region, it’s our job to find a path to ‘Yes’,” said Eric Whitfield, Director of Economic Development for Ameren Illinois. “We have to be resourceful and creative. Ultimately, our engineering and sourcing teams got it done.” The Ameren team secured the needed equipment and coordinated with Tillamook to get the new service connections designed into the facility layout. 
 

Close Collaboration Hits Project Goal

The construction of the new 34.5 kV service was completed in October 2024 and cartons of Tillamook family-size (48 oz.) ice cream and foodservice ice cream (3 gal.) are set to roll off the production line in Decatur in early 2025. The first TCCA-owned and operated manufacturing facility outside of Oregon will ship products across the eastern portion of the U.S., where demand for Tillamook Ice Cream is growing rapidly. Since 2021, Tillamook has added 4.2M customer households in the eastern U.S., and today, Tillamook Ice Cream is the fastest growing family size ice cream brand in the U.S.

“Ameren has been an outstanding partner on Tillamook’s new ice cream manufacturing plant project. From the very beginning they were on site helping us evaluate issues with the existing plant and offer their expertise for modernizing and expanding the plant’s capabilities. At every turn of the project, Ameren worked hard to pull out all the stops, streamlining the engineering, procurement and construction of the plant electrical services. The folks at Ameren have done everything possible to ensure the success of our project and have been very helpful and welcoming to our Tillamook staff. It has been a great partnership that will grow in the future.”

Mark Farrier, Tillamook County Creamery Association Automation Manager