Gove tours Arla’s Ayelsbury milk plant
Tomas Pietrangeli, managing director of Arla Foods UK, met with Michael Gove, secretary of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for a tour of the cooperative’s Aylesbury, UK site.
Said to be the world’s largest fresh milk processing plant, the visit was an opportunity for Pietrangeli to speak with Gove about the future of the UK’s £100 billion (€113.3bn) food and farming industry as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.
During the discussion, Pietrangeli restated Arla’s support for Gove’s vision of a Green Brexit and its focus on maintaining environmental standards. Pietrangeli also noted the Aylesbury Dairy’s credential as the first net zero carbon dairy of its kind and Arla’s ambition to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% as part of its 2020 Good Growth Strategy.
He also used the tour to communicate Arla’s positions on trade, CAP reform and maintenance of UK’s world-class standards and regulation.
Gove says, “My visit was a chance to look around Arla’s state of the art dairy site and see first-hand the scale of investment made to promote not only productivity, but also sustainability.
“Embracing new technology lightens our environmental footprint and it will help our farmers and food producers take full advantage of the opportunities ahead as we prepare to leave the EU, including access to new markets for our great British food.”
Arla is calling on the government to secure a Brexit deal that enables free trade without tariff or non-tariff barriers of dairy products. It is also urging ministers to provide clarity on the future of agriculture as early as possible to enable farmers to prepare for and adapt to any changes.
Pietrangeli comments, “It was a pleasure to welcome the secretary of state Michael Gove to our state of the art processing facility at Aylesbury.
“The food and farming industry is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing industries and the innovation that it strives to bring throughout its supply chain is clearly seen in Aylesbury, the largest fresh milk processing facility in the world which is capable of processing one billion litres of fresh British milk per year.”
