This week saw Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (GII) commencing production at its state-of-the-art nutritional ingredients plant at Belview Co Kilkenny.

At a cost of €185m, it is part of an overall €235m investment by GII to increase processing capacity in readiness for quota removal in less than three weeks’ time.

The joint venture, 60% owned by Glanbia co-op and 40% by Glanbia PLC, will see 700m litres flow through its pipes every year. It is the single largest indigenous investment made by an Irish company in 80 years.

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With GII processing 1.6bn litres or 30% of Ireland’s milk pool on behalf of 4,800 milk suppliers, all products from Belview will be destined for export markets such as Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Central America.

Ingredients

The facility, on 50 acres close to Belview port, will manufacture a range of specialised milk powders and nutritional ingredients.

Every day, 2.5m litres of milk are required to feed two 7.5 tonne/hour dryers to produce 100,000t of dairy powders per year.

With the plant resembling a medical centre inside, food safety is a critical element of the facility.

This is a highly efficient plant, and just 76 people will be employed. It will take as few as 11 people per shift to run the plant.

Automation

Robots and computers also remove the need for direct human intervention. The only direct contacts with the product are when the milk lorry driver connects the milk pipe to the plant’s intake and when the forklift driver loads the container with finished pallets of milk powder destined for export markets.