FDBusiness.com

Adams Food Ingredients, an English subsidiary of the Irish Dairy Board, has opened a state-of-the-art dairy ingredients plant at Leek in Staffordshire. The new 65,000 sq ft facility, including an innovation centre, was completed on time and on budget at a cost of €12.7 million. It marks the successful delivery of a €70 million capital development programme by the IDB in Britain over the past five years.

The new AFI plant is dedicated to developing customised dairy ingredient solutions, aimed at customers in Britain and export markets. It complements the IDB’s cheese pre-packaging plant, also based in Leek, which was commissioned in 2009 and is the largest pre-packer of cheese to the British retail sector.

The new dedicated powder blending production facility further strengthens AFI’s position in the British market as a leading specialist of dairy-based food formulations by doubling capacity to over 20,000 tonnes per annum and giving greater flexibility to produce a range of packaging formats to meet specific customer needs. The innovation centre will enhance AFI’s ability to add value to dairy ingredients and will provide AFI with the platform to develop more advanced specialist applications in partnership with food manufacturers.

The new plant will employ 50 people and replace AFI’s existing facility in Prince Street, Leek. The new manufacturing centre is located on a site adjacent to Adams Foods, IDB’s British consumer foods business. The total IDB complex comprises of six hectares.

In 2009, the IDB commissioned its new £30 million Adams Foods cheese pre-packaging plant in Leek, which packs over 3.5 million packets of cheese a week. The IDB has also invested in its Meadow Cheese ingredients plant in Ledbury, Herefordshire.