The opening of Ornua’s Kerrygold Park in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, is the latest step in Ornua’s growth strategy to significantly increase sales of its iconic Kerrygold brand. The co-op has the ambition to grow retail sales from €750m today to €1bn in the coming years.

This factory will help achieve that target with a capacity of 50,000t and employing 65. Today is significant as it is Ornua’s first move into butter production in Ireland. The site in Dairygold’s Castlefarm dairy complex was chosen for its access to existing services such as a combined heat and power plant and an anaerobic digester.

The 65,000 sq ft facility will produce both ex-churn and from bulk butter, allowing it to produce 52 weeks a year. The cream will be directly piped from Dairygold or via tankers from other processors. 90% of the output will come from cream, with the balance coming from bulk butter manufactured by other processors.

Challenges

One of the challenges for the brand was consistency as it was manufactured on multiple sites with varying equipment types and technical accreditations. This facility will harmonise standards while also giving the capability to produce new formats not currently available in Ireland.

Ornua CEO Kevin Lane said: “Kerrygold Park is core to our ambitious plans to develop the Kerrygold brand from a butter brand to a dairy brand. Not only will the new facility significantly enhance our production, it also greatly improves our innovation capability and our ability to deliver premium dairy products therefore securing value for Irish dairy farmers.”

Last year, Ornua purchased 286,000t of dairy products from Ireland’s dairy processors and is expecting a further 30% growth this year.

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New Kerrygold butter factory to open this week