Dairy Crest is to invest £75m expanding cheddar capacity by 40% at its Davidstow Creamery in North Cornwall.

This will see it add 23,000t of cheddar production to its current 54,000t capacity.

The factory produces the Cathedral City cheese brand. The expansion will see it taking a further 200m litres of milk.

This week, Dairy Crest also issued a trading update for the nine months ended 31 December 2018.

It said it saw strong volume and revenue growth for the third quarter across its key brands.

It said its Cathedral City brand had a particularly good third quarter where both volume and revenue grew by around 10%.

It said its spreads brands continued to gain market share.

The company said there is significant uncertainty around Brexit and the impact of a potentially disorderly exit is hard to predict.

It said that while its supply chain and customer base are primarily located in the UK, it was taking steps to reduce exposure.