Ornua this week received the International Continuous Improvement Excellence Award from Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed and the Leading Edge Group, a consultancy focusing on improving industrial performance.

Ornua's head of operational strategy Sean McHugh said that the co-op had embarked on continuous improvement programmes in 2011, but only formalised them into the company-wide programme, "the Ornua Way", last year. In the past six years, this focus on leaner operations has resulted in €12m in savings, he added.

"There is no particular magic to it," Ornua's chief operating officer Anthony Proctor told the Irish Farmers Journal, adding that the Ornua Way cut costs by €2.4m last year and was on track to achieve similar results this year. "We're trying to reduce the amount of waste that is created within the facility. We're trying to push through as much product as we can in an efficient manner," Proctor said after receiving the award at the Kerrygold Park butter manufacturing plant in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. "Ultimately this leaves us in a position to get a better return and to pay a better price" for cream and butter – which gets passed back to primary co-ops and their farmer shareholders, he added.

Listen to an interview with Anthony Proctor in our podcast below:

A tour of the factory showed how all staff are expected to contribute to the effort at every step in the industrial process. The meeting room hosting daily briefings is wallpapered with indicators tracking progress on issues ranging from quality to health and safety – some on a daily basis, others linked to once-off projects such as the recent re-organisation of the testing lab.

On the butter packing shop floor, a "war on waste" board is on display for any employee to add ideas to cut waste. They are prioritised for action every week.

At the end of the production line, the cold store with its capacity for 1,300 pallets of butter ready for shipment has just been fitted with a new barcode-scanning system which automatically prints all the despatch documents required as soon as a load is ready for pick-up. This has cut the time staff used to spend keeping track of orders and matching them with dockets when ready for shipment.

Kerrygold Park one year on

Ornua's Mitchelstown plant entered production just one year ago. It has the capacity to produce and pack 50,000t annually, either from cream delivered by the pipeline connecting it to the neighboouring Dairygold creamery or by lorries from other co-ops, or from block butter made elsewhere in the country. Proctor said Kerrygold Park had produced 30,000t in its first year and would continue to increase production in the coming years.

Butter shipped from here represents half of the volume sold under the Kerrygold brand. It goes to 30 countries – all of Kerrygold markets except Germany, which has its own packing plant. The US takes in the largest amount of butter leaving Kerrygold Park.