Glanbia Ireland and its farm family suppliers have teamed up with manufacturing partner Complex Nutrition to donate 250,000 nutritional Irish milk powder-based meal kits to feed the victims of the war in Ukraine.
The humanitarian cargo was produced at the Epicom/Complex Nutrition plant in Navan, Co. Meath and will feed thousands of families, Glanbia Ireland said.
The production is now complete and the meal kits will be delivered to hospitals in Ukraine and refugees fleeing to Poland in the coming days through a network of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Ireland.
The ready-to-use meal kits will be delivered by the Ukrainian Embassy which will fly a part of the donation directly to medics in Ukraine.
Glanbia Ireland said that the remainder will be shipped on Monday (March 14) by other volunteer companies in the EO Ireland network.
Complex Nutrition CEO, John Cunningham said:
“The product we’re making will provide a full, nutritional meal for anyone aged three years of age and over just by adding cold water. The product is robust, it has a shelf life of 18 months and can easily be made in a cup or a jug.
“We’ve donated shakers for every box along with an instruction leaflet in both English and Ukrainian. We have 12 nationalities among our workforce here – including one Ukrainian, lots of Polish, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovenians and Romanians.
“They’re all very proud of what we’re doing and are also glad to play their part,” he added.
The CEO thanked everyone involved to get the urgent supplies manufactured and deliver 22 pallets in a 40ft container.
Glanbia Ireland chairman, John Murphy added that initially the aim was to get 100,000 milk powder-based meal kits to refugees in Poland.
“Now that has grown to 250,000 and Glanbia is also providing the minerals and vitamins needed to fortify the food,” he said.