The plant makes cooked meat products and was developed from the local Walsh Family Foods business, the inventor of Dublin’s famous chicken-based spice burger. Its current site was purpose-built on an IDA campus in 1995. It “has been the subject of significant investment in cooking processes that complement the Kepak Group’s value added business interests”, Kepak said in a statement.

The main product currently made at the factory is processed pork ribs, which Kepak already uses in its Rustlers ready-made food brand. "That business will dovetail with our McCarren primary processing business," Kepak managing director John Horgan told the Irish Farmers Journal. Kepak recently completed the €15m expansion of its McCarren Meats pork factory in Cavan.

Re-energise the marketing of the iconic spice burger

The Poppintree plant and also makes beef burgers and meatballs as well as fried chicken products. Kepak said it would use the new premises to expand its Rustlers brand in Ireland, the UK and Europe. With 35 staff, the site is small compared to other Moy Park or Kepak factories.

Horgan said the acquisition would help the company in “meeting the challenge of changing consumer tastes, increasingly competitive markets and the potential disruption from Brexit.”

A new company called Kepak Poppintree was registered two months ago to manage the factory. Kepak said it had plans to “re-energise the marketing of the iconic spice burger”. The company said the acquisition was not subject to competition authority approval.

This is the fourth acquisition by Kepak this year following the joint venture investment in Greene Farm Fine Foods in Westmeath, and the acquisitions of Country Park Foods in the UK and Kepak Clare – a standalone abattoir.

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