FDBusiness.com

Danone is investing €240 million to build a new plant for its Early Life Nutrition business. The investment will allow Danone to capitalize on the strong and growing demand for its international early life nutrition brands, including Aptamil and Nutrilon, for both standard and specialized products. The state-of-the-art facility will be built in Cuijk in the Netherlands, and will start production in late 2017.

The new plant is Danone’s largest investment in its European production capabilities, and will double its capacity in the Netherlands. Output will be exported to more than 80 countries worldwide.

Felix Martin Garcia, executive vice president of the Danone Nutricia Early Life Nutrition division, says: “Building our new production plant in Cuijk is a major step for Danone and Nutricia. It will give us the capacity we need to meet rising demand for our early life nutrition products, and is consistent with our 2020 roadmap calling for strong, profitable and sustainable growth. We are also delighted to be making this investment in the Netherlands, where our Nutricia brand has had a proud heritage stretching back over more than 100 years.”

The Cuijk location was chosen to capitalize on the expert know-how of current staff, and for the site’s proximity to Danone’s Research & Development center in Utrecht, which is the company’s global hub for research dedicated to early life nutrition and advanced medical nutrition.

The new facility incorporates state-of-the-art technologies and will meet Danone’s targets for sustainability, offering very high energy efficiency and complying with the strictest CO2 emission standards.