Meadow Foods invests to meet dairy demand

Meadow Foods the UK's largest supplier of dairy ingredients to the food and drink industry, is investing £400,000 in new state-of-the-art equipment at its Yorkshire-based creamery.

The latest spending includes the installation of an automated packing line and robotic palletiser at the company's 16 acre site in Holme-Upon-Spalding Moor. The move will improve productivity at the busy site by 15% and boost health and safety by cutting manual handling requirements.

Meadow Foods, which is the UK's only independent producer of sweetened condensed milk and chocolate crumb, supplying leading food manufacturers including Nestle and Thorntons with ingredients for chocolate and confectionary products.

The new packing line is the first step in a major capital investment programme for Meadow Foods, which will enable the business to increase the volume of milk it processes by a further 300m litres.

John Lambert, managing director for Meadow Foods’ in Yorkshire, said: “We’ve seen demand from food manufacturing customers increase dramatically over recent years. This trend looks set to continue. Volatility in the global milk markets is driving many manufacturers to secure their supply of quality dairy ingredients.

“We’re already stepping up farmer recruitment and by investing in efficiency at our manufacturing sites, we can ensure that Meadow Foods is ideally placed to meet demand and will continue to return a market-leading price to farmers.”

Meadow Foods has an annual turnover of £250m and handles more than 400m litres of milk per year from a network of 400 farmers nationwide.