Fonterra invests in cheese plant
Fonterra Australia will invest £93 (€129) million in building a state of the art cheese plant at its Stanhope factory. The new facility will replace the hard cheese plant, which was destroyed by fire in December 2014, with a larger, modern facility that will produce cheeses for Australian consumer, foodservice and export markets.
Judith Swales, managing director at Fonterra Oceania, says, “We are focusing on areas where we can win in a highly competitive market, and that means optimising our product mix and investing in higher value add products that will deliver the best returns for our farmer shareholders. Rebuilding and expanding our Stanhope cheese plant is key to this.
“The new state of the art facility will be able to produce 45,000MT of cheeses each year including parmesan, gouda and mozzarella, an increase of 15,000MT on the previous plant.
“As the branded market leader in the A$1.95 billion retail cheese category, with Bega, Mainland and Perfect Italiano commanding 23% market share, the new plant will supply our Australian consumer and foodservice businesses, and export markets.” The multi-million dollar project will secure the future of the site and generate up to 30 jobs.
