Lakeland unveils €40m milk powder plant

Lakeland Dairies has opened a new €40 million milk powder plant at its Bailieboro site in Cavan, Ireland.

The new facility is among the most advanced milk powder plants in the world and one of the largest such plants in Europe, according to Lakeland Dairies.

It is hoped that this expansion will allow greater flexibility in milk throughput and overall economies of scale for the food ingredients business.

This is Lakeland Dairies’ third milk drying plant at its Bailieboro processing centre. It will now produce over 160,000 tonnes of milk powders and 50,000 tonnes of butter annually on the same site.

The expansion also saw the installation of a new seven tonne per hour milk dryer and evaporators where total milk powder production capacity has now increased to 20 tonnes per hour.

With 2,400 dairy farmers supplying milk across 15 counties, Lakeland Dairies employs around 800 people. The co-operative also processes over 1.2 billion litres of farm produced milk annually into 240 value-added dairy foodservice products and ingredients for export to approximately 80 countries worldwide.

Michael Hanley, CEO of Lakeland Dairies, says, “Our strategy is to create long term competitiveness and sustainability for all of our milk producers, north and south, and to meet the long term needs of our valued customers in the global food industry where we see constant demand for our products.

“In particular, we are addressing opportunities in the areas of infant formulas, dairy proteins, food manufacturing and health related nutritional products, among other categories, where we are already a globally recognised leading supplier of powders.”