Construction jobs start at 36m lakeland dairies expansion

Lakelands Dairies continued to churn out good news stories with the announcement of the creation of 81 new jobs and 180 construction jobs. 

Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton is the guest of honour this morning to turn the first sod on the €36m construction project as work to expand the milk powder processing operations starts immediately.
The expansion will see the installation of a new 7 tonne per hour milk drying facility at Bailieboro where total milk powder production capacity will increase to 19 tonnes per hour.
The construction jobs will be created by contractors during the building, installation and commissioning phases for the new processing facilities. The overall development will lead to the creation of 81 jobs across the Lakeland Dairies Group over a five year period.
The farmer owned dairy processing co-operative, Lakeland Dairies processes over 800m litres of farm produced milk annually into a wide range of value-added dairy foodservice products and food ingredients which it exports to over 70 countries worldwide. Following the abolition of milk quotas later this year, annual milk supply to Lakeland Dairies is expected to increase by some 40% to over 1 billion litres by 2020. The development by Lakeland Dairies is designed to ensure that the co-operative is well positioned to take advantage of all future market opportunities for its milk producers.
“Ireland’s food industry offers massive potential for regional employment which is a major focus of the Government’s 2015 Action Plan for Jobs. The removal of milk quotas later this year offers huge opportunities that we intend to exploit in a planned and strategic way in order to support jobs growth across every region in Ireland,” said Minister Bruton, flanked by his party colleague, the Minister for Arts Heather Humphreys.
“At the heart of our jobs plan is creating a powerful engine of Irish enterprise alongside the strong multinational sector. Investment by Irish businesses like Lakeland Dairies is more likely to be in rural areas, and has a massive knock-on impact on the local economy, through construction, supply and service businesses. With continued implementation of our plan, I am determined to ensure that we can see more announcements like this in the coming years across every region of Ireland”.
Lakeland Dairies had annual revenues of €545.5m in 2013 and currently employs 700 people and the co-op’s chairman, Alo Duffy believes there’s more scope for expansion. “When EU milk quotas are abolished this year, Lakeland Dairies’ milk producers will have the freedom to increase milk output in line with continuing and future growth in global demand for dairy products. Lakeland Dairies is focussed on the creation of a bright and sustainable future for our milk producers. This includes investments in modern and streamlined plants which guarantee an expanded milk processing capacity and provide the flexibility to meet global market needs.”
Lakeland currently produces 80,000 tonnes of milk powders a year and this will rise to 130,000 tonnes on completion of the project in 2016. The co-operative also produces 24,000 tonnes of butter on the same site which provides for considerable flexibility in milk throughput and overall economies of scale for the food ingredients business.
Lakeland Dairies’ Group CEO Michael Hanley said, “Growth in our global dairy ingredients business is being fuelled by consumer trends and developments in food industry sectors where we have access to key markets and customers throughout the world. Over the past five years we have transformed our processing capabilities and have also underpinned our future export potential with new global logistics facilities. The expansion of our operations at Bailieboro will create further advantages for our milk producers. In particular, we see continuing opportunity in the areas of infant formulae, dairy proteins and health related nutritional products, among other categories, where we are a globally recognised leading supplier of the highest quality milk powders.”