Queens loses another manufacturer

From DNA Info:

After nearly 100 years in business, the Elmhurst Dairy will close its milk processing plant in Jamaica, resulting in the loss of 273 jobs and the end of the city's famous brand, the company announced Tuesday.

The dairy, which according to its website, supplies milk to more than 8,300 grocers and 1,400 public schools, is the last of about 20 milk processing plants in the New York City and Long Island area which all closed within the past 25 years, the company said.

The dairy, currently located on a 15-acre lot at 155-25 Styler Road, was started by brothers Max and Arthur Schwartz at their father's farm on Caldwell Avenue in Elmhurst in 1919.

In the mid-1930s, the company moved to a small facility on South Road in Jamaica, and later expanded to nearby Styler Road.

In the late 1940s, Percy Krout, Max's brother-in-law, who ran another family dairy farm in Middle Village, joined the business.

Crying over expensive milk

CITY TAKING A BATH ON NEW MILK-DELIVERY DEAL
By DAN MANGAN and YOAV GONEN, NY Post

Talk about milking the system! The city Department of Education is on track to spend $35 million more on milk contracts over the next five years after scrapping its old delivery system -- just as The Post warned last year.

Companies formerly bid on individual schools and added them to their store routes, costing the city $19 million a year.

So the DOE created eight huge routes, eliminating smaller distributors. Yet the new cost of delivery is $26 million a year, a 37 percent jump.

The DOE attributes the spike to an 81 percent rise in the price of milk since the last contracts were signed in 2003. But a gallon cost less than $2.80 in 2003 and $3.80 last year, about 35 percent more. And since then, it's dropped back to $3.20.

Still, David Ross, DOE head of contracting, insists going from some 1,200 bids to one on Staten Island, one in Manhattan and two in each of the other three boroughs reins in costs.