Hiring has begun at the sprawling new fairlife milk processing plant in Webster, and production line testing soon will get underway.
Work to finish building the plant itself continues. But as that construction winds down, attention is shifting to road improvements and extensions — and what comes next.
The roadwork will unlock nearly 300 acres spread along the north side of State Route 104. Land and buildings that Xerox amassed in its heyday could be repurposed for new manufacturing, offices, shops or restaurants or even housing.
Xerox will remain, but with a smaller campus, allowing the town to capitalize on this moment, and the opening of fairlife — the largest single industrial development in the history of Monroe County.
“A lot of this is coming to a head,” Webster town Supervisor Tom Flaherty said. “How long it takes to all carry out and when the first parcel will be sold by Xerox to a developer? I wouldn't be surprised if that's in the first quarter of ’26.”
Most pressing is a road extension that will carry truck and employee traffic over to Salt Road, which has on- and off-ramps onto 104. The plant is located off Basket Road, which also links to 104 but with a traffic light.
Timing here is important.
The company plans to begin product line testing in late November, a methodical process that will coincide with what Ed Burger, vice president of engineering, large capital projects for fairlife, describes as "one of the quieter periods for, like, heavy vehicles coming and going from site." The hope is to begin shipping the first product to store shelves early next year.
"The plant will really be into its rhythm, like 24 hours a day, full shifts, all lines running for the second half of next year,” Burger said, which is likely well before the road extension opens. “But it'll be pretty stop-and-start for the first six months.”
The company has hired 125 employees already, working toward a total of 335. Once operating at capacity, the plant is projected to bring in 200 semi-trailer and tanker trucks per day.
Big, 'beautiful' and bustling
Fairlife is a billion-dollar company owned by Coca-Cola. In Webster, it plans to make Core Power protein shakes, Nutrition Plan meal replacement shakes, and milk, which is ultra-filtered and produced in such a way that it is high-protein, low-sugar and lactose-free.
But today, the property is still a buzzing construction site.
“All the silos are here. Basically all of our major equipment is in place. Now we're waiting for some packaging gear,” Burger said. “But, you know, 95% of the critical equipment is here and in place.”
The plant will be the largest of its kind in the northeastern United States, and initially was estimated to cost $650 million to build.
Project costs have escalated, but company officials aren’t saying by how much. Fairlife made additional investments, laying the groundwork for a future expansion. And much of the highly specialized equipment came from overseas.
“It all hit port, you know, over the last six months,” Burger said. “So, yeah, we've certainly been impacted by tariffs but, you know, equipment's on the way, so there's not much we can really do about it.”
The plant itself is enormous. On one end is receiving, with nine truck bays. On the other is the warehouse, with racks upwards of 10 stories high that took the better part of two years to build.
And in between, in a space roughly equal to a dozen football fields, with cavernous rooms and exceedingly high ceilings. The rooms open off a central corridor, connected via a web of stainless steel piping but each housing different, specialty equipment.
In one room are large, canister-like apparatus — each capable of filling 900 bottles per minute. Two are in place. Two more are yet to be installed.
“It kind of starts to feel normal,” Burger said, walking through the plant, “until you go to another factory and you're like, ‘Wow, this factory feels small.’
“But when it’s finished, it’ll be beautiful," he continued, adding: "It’ll be neat, too.”
Back to the future
On a recent day this month, there were 520 tradespeople from a couple dozen contractors and suppliers working on the fairlife site.
“I think we peaked at just over 700 people,” Burger said, adding: “There's like a traffic jam here every single morning, and every single night.”
A combination of fairlife and town projects starting soon will upgrade the road network in that area.
Tebor Road, which leads into the site, will get widened and resealed, and its drainage will get re-done. The road also will be widened or flared out at Basket Road, providing a wider turn radius. That’s a fairlife project. Another access road to the north will be upgraded. And Basket Road will get a wider turn radius as well at 104.
The town and village, meanwhile, are eying $10 million in roadwork that is almost entirely state-funded. Included in that is the Boulter Industrial Parkway extension, and a Chiyoda Drive extension to Route 250. The town also will be taking over and improving several Xerox-owned roadways on the campus, including Mitcheldean Drive.
But this roadwork is just getting started, with state funding awarded last month and the road extensions likely to go before the Town Board in October. Flaherty estimates it could be late 2026 or early 2027 before the Boulter extension is ready and drivable — meaning Basket Road will ferry all the truck traffic in the short term.
“And fairlife is very aware of that,” he said. “It's not ideal."
The roadwork is not just for fairlife, though. It's also being done to support the redevelopment of the Xerox campus, a site that is already drawing interest from major corporations, according to local economic development officials.
Skaneateles-based Tessy Plastics Corp. took 110 acres back in 2022, in what Flaherty said was the “seminal moment” in getting Xerox to look at selling off the land. But it took fairlife to get things rolling, he said, as “it became very apparent that that that 800-acre campus is situated perfectly for development over the next five to 10 years.”
That will mean still more traffic. Not a problem, Flaherty said.
“There's 1,500 people that work on that campus. ... There used to be 15,000,” he said. “So we've had robust car traffic and truck traffic, back in the day. It's recency bias. People have gotten used to, it's like a country road out there. It's an industrial campus.
“We're not going to something that has never been there. It's just that it hasn't been like that since 1990.”
