The company notified its 125 or so workers of the shutdown Tuesday, which will result in the loss of about 30 jobs, said Bahman Sadeghi, part owner of Foremost. Foremost will continue to distribute milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream, ice cream and other cultured-milk products in the interim, he said.

The shutdown of the milk-processing portion of the business was necessitated by equipment problems and a recent order by the Department of Health preventing the use of certain milk storage facilities, he said. Sadeghi said those issues have not affected milk quality.

"This is the whole reason we're doing this: to preserve quality," he said. "It's only the production that we're temporarily closing down as we evaluate our processes and do some repairs."

Whether the 52-year-old dairy will again produce milk will be evaluated during the shutdown. The answer will depend on the cost of making needed repairs and whether former Foremost owner House Foods Corp. is willing to pick up some of the tab, Sadeghi said. Sadeghi purchased Foremost from House earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.

"There are many possibilities that could come about," he said. "It could take longer (to make repairs) or cost too much money to take care of this."

Plans are to continue to sell Foremost brand milk that's either processed and packaged on the Mainland or by competitor Meadow Gold Dairies, Sadeghi said. As a result the supply and availability of fresh milk in Hawai'i shouldn't be affected, he said.

"None whatsoever," Sadeghi said. "Otherwise we wouldn't be able to make money. We just won't be producing here."

Ron Kozuma, business agent for the Teamsters and Allied Workers Local 996, which represents about 105 Foremost workers, said the union is seeking legal advice to determine whether it can prevent the shutdown.

"We are going to challenge this potential closure," he said. "There may be some anti-trust laws as far as who is going to produce the milk.

"Worst comes to worst, (we want to ) try to find them other jobs in the dairy or even outside the dairy" industry, Kozuma said.