Arla Foods to close its Brabrand Dairy
Arla Foods has announced that it will be closing its Brabrand Dairy in Aarhus, Denmark due to an increasing demand for yogurt products from European consumers and a lack of expansion options.
The site is expected to close in mid 2019 and production will be moved to other sites in Denmark, Holland and Germany.
Jakob Bernhard Knudsen, senior vice president and head of Arla Danmark, says, “European consumers are buying more and more yogurt products, and we need to look at how we can secure future production capacity and ensure yogurt products of a high quality across the European countries.
“As we cannot expand production at Brabrand Dairy because of the location and costs of production equipment, we are moving production to competence centres at primarily Danish, Dutch and German production sites.”
The bulk of production from Brabrand Dairy will remain in Denmark and will move to Slagelse and Hobro Dairies to ensure the high quality, Danishness and the Danish organic logo that characterise Arla’s yogurt products, Arla says.
This applies to a number of Arla’s well-known Danish brands, including 1 litre yogurt products Yoggi, Cheasy, A38, Arla Øko and crème fraîche, while production of smaller products requiring special packaging will be moved to Sweden and Germany.
“The aim is to create production sites that are experts within the individual products, both in terms of production and development,” explains Knudsen.
A plan will be prepared together with trade unions and the production site’s liaison committee to ensure that the 160 Arla employees are given good terms – both if they choose to stay until the production site closes in 2019 and for their future careers.
Knudsen concludes, “It is important to us that we help the employees at Brabrand Dairy move on in a good way, either to jobs at other Arla production sites or outside Arla.
“And I am pleased that we can maintain and develop more jobs at the Danish production sites, which will take over production from Brabrand Dairy.”
