McMINNVILLE, Ore. — The dairy cooperative Organic Valley has decided to rebuild its McMinnville creamery, which was damaged in an April 20 fire.

The new creamery will be built on the same site.

Construction costs are estimated at $30 million to $50 million, paid for with insurance and capital.

For months following the fire, the cooperative had been assessing the damage and scoping out potential sites for a new facility. Last summer, the co-op’s leaders told the Capital Press they were considering various “options” and “incentives” for where to build. On Oct. 21, the co-op announced its plans to rebuild on the existing site.

“To help keep small, organic family farms on the landscape, we are excited to share that Organic Valley will be rebuilding our facility, stronger than ever, in McMinnville, Oregon,” said Steve Pierson, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in St. Paul, Ore., and president of the co-op’s board of directors.

Pierson’s organic, family-run operation, Sar-Ben Farms, has 320 milking cows and 175 irrigated acres about 30 miles south of Portland.

Organic Valley has already begun using the site again for some loading and unloading.

The plan is to rebuild a portion of the McMinnville facility — which the co-op nicknamed “MAC” — right away to accommodate bulk milk standardization and provide a short-term solution for milk powder. This first phase of the rebuilding, the co-op’s leaders say, should be done by March. The new intake bay and lab should then be done by June.

The second phase of the plan will include building a facility for business operations. This portion of the rebuilding, the co-op estimates, will likely last into 2023.

The move to rebuild is significant for Oregon’s dairy community, as the processing facility that burned was a location of major importance to the industry.

Before it burned, the McMinnville facility’s main building was 25,000 square feet, served 60 farms and the creamery handled nearly 4 million pounds of milk per week to make butter and milk powder.

Organic Valley had acquired the McMinnville creamery from another local co-op, the Farmers Cooperative Creamery, in 2016. Organic Valley renovated the site and reopened it the following year. According to Mark Pfeiffer, Organic Valley’s vice president of internal operations, the co-op has spent upward of $23 million renovating the plant since 2016.

When a fire damaged a significant portion of the creamery in April, the co-op’s leaders told the Capital Press they were “devastated” and “reeling.”

In a previous interview with the Capital Press, Pierson, the board president, said the co-op worked hard this year to ensure its members had access to organic markets for their milk. Organic Valley continued buying milk and worked with several processing partners, including Darigold, Kroger and Smith Brothers Farms.

Pierson said the co-op is grateful to its many partners that “helped our cooperative throughout this challenging time” — not just other dairy companies, but also Business Oregon, the McMinnville Economic Development Partnership, McMinnville Water and Light and the City of McMinnville Planning Department.

“We look forward to growing our capabilities in McMinnville, Oregon, and turning organic dairy from small family farms into delicious products for families across the Pacific Northwest,” Pierson said.