A former Frecker's Ice Cream plant in Columbus, Ohio, will soon be "home, sweet home" for upscale town home dwellers. An area developer recently broke ground on a project to convert the facility into 30 units, each priced at around $240,000.

Saputo Inc. has completed its acquisition of Fromage Cote S.A. and Distributions Kingsey Inc. The purchase price was nearly $43 million (US).

Henry B. Kopf and Henry Kopf III, both of Cary, N.C., have developed an apparatus and method for separation of milk and milk products, e.g., involving sequential separation of milk, colostrum, and whey components by cross-flow filtration. Kopf is a former principal with PTI Advanced Filtration.

Raw milk consumption was in the news in Boston last month with a story in The Boston Globe that focused in part on an informal distribution network called Just Dairy. The story quoted members of the group who said they believe raw milk is more beneficial than pasteurized milk and had little fear of the risks involved in consuming unpasteurized milk.

Finally, there's no debate about California's dairy promoters having something to be happy about. The California Milk Advisory Board's Real California Cheese marketing campaign was recently the subject of a 34-page case study from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. The study's author, Michelle Greenwald says the campaign was a major part in the state's transformation from an also-ran player to the top dairy producing state in the country. Greenwald said the coordinated use of many techniques was a key to the success, which she termed "tremendous."

"They didn't let egos get involved, and they kept building it," she said.