Sioux Honey Breaks Ground on $130 Million Processing Expansion

Sioux Honey Association Co-Op has broken ground on a $130 million expansion in Sioux City, Iowa, a multi-phase project designed to increase the cooperative's production capacity by 50% while adding new processing, packaging, laboratory and raw-honey storage capabilities.

The project is significant for the U.S. honey supply chain because it combines manufacturing expansion with a larger traceability and storage platform. Sioux Honey, the maker of Sue Bee and Aunt Sue's honey, says its membership increased 25% in 2025, adding about 7 million pounds of honey and increasing the need for processing and storage capacity.

The first phase includes renovation of an existing building into roughly 200,000 square feet of finished-goods warehouse space and 26,000 square feet of corporate offices. That work is expected to be completed in 2027.

Later phases will add a new processing facility, laboratory and raw-honey warehouse. Sioux Honey says the new processing operation is expected to be running by summer 2028.

Packaging flexibility is a central part of the investment. The planned facility will include upgraded processing and bottling lines designed for multiple bottle sizes and formats, along with specialty lines intended to support customer-specific packaging and future product development.

The cooperative expects the full project to create approximately 39 jobs. Local reporting also says Sioux Honey plans to relocate its California operations to Sioux City as part of the expansion.

For food manufacturers and retailers, the project illustrates how traceability requirements are increasingly shaping physical processing infrastructure. Sioux Honey explicitly linked the investment to growing demand from customers and consumers for greater transparency about food origin.

The cooperative was founded in Sioux City in 1921 and says it now represents more than 180 U.S. beekeeping families. Its expansion therefore increases capacity not only for a branded honey manufacturer but for a producer-owned processing network tied directly to domestic beekeepers.

Sources: Sioux Honey Association Co-Op announcement distributed September 24, 2026 by GlobeNewswire; Siouxland Public Media reporting published September 23, 2026.