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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2014 HEALTH & SCIENCE For Chobani founder, American dream made of Greek yogurt NEW YORK: It only took Turkish immi- student job at a farm in a yogurt-produc- Manhattan’s trendy SoHo neighborhood. 2013 seems to have left the company rel- Germany and France, according to the grant Hamdi Ulukaya’s yogurt seven ing region of New York state, and the But, he emphasized, it’s the yogurt that atively unscathed. US Department of Agriculture. years to sweep American grocery isles, rest, of course, was history. The blossom- “will close the deal.” Meanwhile the yogurt market has Ulukaya would like to encourage where Chobani now competes with ing entrepreneur signed up for a busi- In October 2007 Chobani-named been totally recast: Greek yogurt now yogurt consumption for other US meals some of the biggest brands like Danone ness program at the University of Albany after the Turkish word for shepherd-was accounts for 40 percent of the $8 billion besides breakfast. He envisions yogurt and Yoplait. “I love winning, I hate failure,” in New York state. officially born. It contained no fat, twice US yogurt industry. And Chobani, which with oats, a sour cream rival, and a mues- said the 42-year-old, whose story epito- the protein of its peers and no artificial employs 2,000 people, boasts 40 percent li-infused product. He invested $450 mil- mizes the American dream. When Self-made man flavors. At the time, Danone and Yoplait of that market share. lion in a plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, consid- Ulukaya arrived in the United States, he During a visit to the United States, his accounted for 71 percent of the ered to be the biggest production facility had $3,000 in his pocket. Today, he’s at father complained about the quality of American yogurt market, according to The future of Chobani for fresh products in the world. Medium- the helm of the trendy Greek yogurt feta-a traditional soft, Greek cheese-and AllianceBernstein. Greek yogurt account- With his medium build and sporty term plans could see Chobani traded on industry. suggested his son make his own. ed for only two percent. In 2009, things look, Ulukaya, who dresses in casual the stock market and making strategic Creamy, rich in protein and low in fat, Ulukaya founded Euphrates, a feta com- really took off when the ShopRite gro- attire, lives with his two German partnerships. “Greek yogurt” made from cow’s milk is pany that supplied local restaurants and cery chain began selling Chobani. Shepherds in the town of New Berlin, This year Ulukaya received a $750 mil- increasingly prized by health-conscious retailers. Then in 2004, he came across an Other large retailers such as Trader New York. He seems unfazed by his new- lion investment from TPG Capital, which consumers, and it has benefited from the advertisement for a dairy specializing in Joe’s, Costco and Whole Foods, jumped found wealth and is not one to flock to gives the firm a less than 20 percent growing popularity of the Mediterranean fresh products for $700,000. on board-and sales followed. Whole posh social scenes. He calls himself sin- equity stake if performance targets are diet in the Western world. Ulukaya, who Thanks to $1 million provided in large Foods stopped selling Chobani in 2013, gle rather than divorced. His ex-wife, met. The transaction sets the company’s was born into a nomadic family in the part by a small-business loan program, saying it wanted to sell more niche who is suing him, is asking for $1 billion, value at roughly $4 billion. Despite some town of Ilic sometime in late October Ulukaya became the owner in August yogurts. Last year, Chobani sales exceed- which she says accounts for almost a trial runs in Asia and Europe, Ulukaya 1972 and landed in New York in 1994 to 2005. And after 18 months of testing, his ed $1 billion, and they are estimated to third of the company that she claims she shelved international expansion plans study English, sensed an opportunity. recipe-which he packaged in larger con- come in at around $1.5 billion this year. helped finance. In the United States, and will soon open cafes where Chobani Like many immigrants, he was home- tainers than competitors-was ready. “It Even a mold outbreak that caused a average yogurt consumption lies at 14 products will be sold. “I am focused on sick for his country, which he left for was all about the package. It will catch recall of certain products with “best by” pounds (6.36 kilograms) per person per the American market. Yogurt is underde- political reasons. But he took solace in a your eye,” he said, seated at a table in dates between September and October year compared with 60 pounds in veloped in America,” he said. —AFP China farmers washed away as Beijing taps water from south ‘We made a sacrifice for the country’ NANYANG: Before their villages were submerged Huang Jianchao, 50, said that transport was better in In the 1950s, more 400,000 people were forced to beneath a gargantuan scheme to move water hundreds their new home, “but there’s no work to do, and we have relocate to make way for the Sanmenxia dam in north- of kilometers to China’s arid north, government officials less land than before”-a regularly echoed complaint. “My ern China. A senior official later described the dam as “a promised farmers better lives far from their ancestral income was higher before we moved”. The relocation stupid mistake” after it clogged with silt. Those forced to homes. Water is due to start flowing this month along office of Nanyang city, where the four villages are locat- move for the latest megaproject are victims of China’s the central route of the South-North Water Diversion ed, told AFP that all migrants received at least 700 square centralized politics, said academics who have studied it. project, a monumental $81 billion design to salve the meters of “productive” land, and a 600 yuan annual pay- “The cities and communities around the Danjiangkou thirst of Beijing and surrounding regions. But many of ment for 20 years. It admitted that “embezzlement” of reservoir are politically and economically less important the more than 300,000 people who made way for it have relocation funds was a problem but said the number of than China’s capital region,” said Britt-Crow Miller, assis- been left unemployed in leaking, shoddy houses, while few say they have been given the compensation they CHINA: Visitors on top of the Danjiangkou dam, at Danjiankou in China’s central were pledged. Hubei province. The grand scheme was suggested by Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong more than 60 years ago, and analysts say the migrants’ plight shows how lit- tle megaproject management has changed since his era. Jia Xinlong remembers pounding rain soaking the ground as an entire village loaded their possessions- generations’ worth of furniture and agricultural tools- onto lorries which would take them more than 300 kilometers away. When they arrived three years ago at their new home-a clump of dozens of identical white houses rising out of surrounding fields called Yaojia New Migrant Village-some burst into tears. “We felt uneasy. The houses were badly built, the ceilings were already cracking,” Jia said, pointing out gaps in the plastered roofing of a shop. “We made a sacrifice for the country,” said his friend Jia Zhangjun, “and we lost out.” ‘The country asked us’ The Chinese government says the project will solve a CHINA: villagers, who were relocated to make way for the expansion of the chronic shortage in the cities of the country’s north, sup- Danjiangkou reservoir. CHINA: This photo shows a factory partly submerged below the Danjiangkou reser- plying Beijing with a billion cubic meters of water every voir near Jianying village. —AFP photos year. Northern China supports nearly half the country’s population and economy but has just a fifth of the cases “was not too many to be checked”. Nonetheless tant professor of geography at the University of national water supply, according to the World Bank. more than a dozen migrants interviewed by AFP said California, adding the migrants were left “without choice Recent statistics show that Beijing’s water levels have fall- that they had not received their payments, blaming cor- in the matter”. en to just 120 cubic meters per person-less than Algeria ruption. “We haven’t received anything,” said Liang Scott Moore at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and roughly on par with Yemen and Israel, all three of Qingfeng, 40, in Liangzhuangdong. “The central policies of Government said the project planning showed that them largely desert. are good, but they aren’t enforced.” “not much has changed since Mao in terms of public The South-North Water Diversion project is an consultation”. But despite their disappointments, some attempt to address the shortfall by reshaping the very ‘Satisfaction doesn’t matter’ migrants spoke with pride of “making a contribution” to geography of China, and according to state media its The displaced are among millions of Chinese relocat- China’s development. middle route has required at least 330,000 people in the ed in recent decades by vast engineering experiments In a rare migrant village constructed within sight of central provinces of Henan and Hubei to move. Migrants that have fuelled the country’s economic boom. More its original location, a 71-year-old woman surnamed Liu in four villages visited by AFP had their homes sub- than a million people were moved to make way for the pointed towards her house, now submerged under an merged under the newly expanded Danjiangkou reser- massive Three Gorges dam-the world’s largest by gener- enormous blue reservoir.

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