A €40 million investment in Kerrygold Park by Ornua represents a “significant milestone” in the strategic growth of the Kerrygold brand, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has said.
The minister today (Wednesday, October 25) officially opened the enhanced butter production facility in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork.
The investment means that the plant can now produce over one million retail packs of butter per day or around 80,000t of butter annually.
Minister McConalogue said that a key part of the strategic development of Kerrygold will be to add value by diversifying existing products into higher value products.
The butter production facility at Kerrygold Park includes two state-of-the-art butter churns and 10 packing lines for a range of over 50 different product formats that are supplied to more than 60 markets globally.
A new 100g Kerrygold butter stick was also recently launched on the Irish market.
“It’s a really important and significant day and a really significant investment here and it will enable Kerrygold to really go and continue to grow.
“That’s a wonderful story in terms of the output of Irish dairy and Kerrygold which really is such an anchor in terms of a product and a brand coming from Irish dairy, we’ll continue to see that grow into the future,” McConalogue told Agriland.
“It was great to see Kerrygold become the first €1 billion food brand in Ireland, the objective is for that to go to €2 billion and key to that is going to be this plant,” he added.
The investment in Kerrygold Park, which will create 30 jobs at the plant, was partly supported by government through a €5 million grant from the Capital Investment Scheme operated by Enterprise Ireland.
The new roles will bring Ornua’s total workforce at Kerrygold Park to 180.
Kerrygold
Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney, who was also present for the official launch, added:
“This plant, along with the other infrastructure that we’ve seen built across the Irish dairy sector over the last decade or so, is about ensuring that the family farm model that we have on a grass-based system remains financially sustainable into the future, as well as of course the responsibility to make it environmentally sustainable too.
“This investment is strategically significant for the Irish food industry as a whole, which is Ireland’s largest indigenous manufacturing sector by some margin.
“Food production employs now over 160,000 people and accounts for over 8% of Ireland’s exports,” he said.
Dairy exit scheme
Minister Charlie McConalogue also told Agriland that the government is continuing to consider a voluntary dairy exit scheme.
He added that regardless of what decision is made he wants to see food production and farm incomes increase.
“Our objective here is to continue to be really productive and to back farm families in relation to producing food.
“What we want is more Kerrygold, more butter, more dairy over the years ahead and adding particularly more value to that and this plant is going to be really important in doing that,” he said.
“Obviously in relation to our emissions the Food Vision Dairy Group suggested the potential for a voluntary exit scheme.
“That’s not something we as a government have made any decision on and indeed there is very mixed views in the sector as well.
“Most farm organisations don’t believe there is a role for it. So it’s still under consideration,” the minister added.
“But to be clear as we go forward here what I want to do as minister and what the government wants to do is keep food production up.
“There’s a really important role and a real demand and need for food, not just in Ireland but particularly across the world in the next 10, 20, 30 years as the world population grows,” McConalogue said.