Ornua invests in Spanish R&D centre

Ornua has opened a new R&D centre at its existing Spanish headquarters based just outside Madrid.

Lorcan Allen

9 September 2015

Ornua Invests in Research & Development Centre in Spain. At the opening are (l-r): Kevin Lane, CEO, Ornua, Aaron Forde, chairman, Ornua, Jose Luis Rivas, Mayor of Ãvila and David Cooney, Irish Ambassador to Spain.

Ornua, formally the Irish Dairy Board, has opened a new Research and Development centre at its Spanish headquarters (Ornua Ingredientes Espana) based in the town of Ávila, not far from Madrid.Ornua say the new R&D centre will “further strengthen its position as a global provider of innovative cheese solutions” to the food service and catering industries.

Ornua, formally the Irish Dairy Board, has opened a new Research and Development centre at its Spanish headquarters (Ornua Ingredientes Espana) based in the town of Ávila, not far from Madrid.

Ornua say the new R&D centre will “further strengthen its position as a global provider of innovative cheese solutions” to the food service and catering industries.

Ornua Ingredientes Espana is similar to its operations in the Middle East, US and the UK as it provides cheese solutions to business, particularly for pizza manufacturers.

Ornua’s Spanish business has its eye on increasing its scale in the southern-European market and this new R&D centre will give the business the ability to develop new product lines for existing and new customers.

Speaking at the announcement, Ornua chief executive Kevin Lane said: “Since acquiring the business in 2014 we have strengthened our position in the Spanish market by building a significant manufacturing, trading and sales hub to service our growing southern Europe customer base.”

“Investment in new product development will allow us to build on that, enabling us to more effectively meet the changing needs of our customers and to target new markets,” added Lane.

Investment strategy

The investment in its Spanish business is part of a wider European strategy for Ornua, which already acquired Dairygold’s European retail cheese business based in Germany for an undisclosed sum earlier this year.

Although it has faced significant downward pressure, cheese has been one of the more resilient dairy commodities in terms of price since the downturn in dairy markets began. Irish exports of cheese to other EU countries for the first five months of 2015 has increased by almost 50% compared with the same period last year.

Ireland is now the second-largest exporter of cheese to other EU countries behind Germany, which shows that our processors are indeed chasing better returns from output by producing dairy commodities returning the best value on international markets at present.