FDBusiness.com

Ornua’s UK-based nutritional ingredients business, Ornua Nutrition Ingredients (ONI), and EasiYo, the homemade, fresh yogurt brand from New Zealand, have entered into a supply partnership. This will see ONI utilise a new, purpose-built, production facility at its headquarters in Leek in the UK, to blend and pack high-quality, Irish, dairy powders into the full range of EasiYo natural and flavoured yogurt mixes for the UK and European markets. This will be the first time that EasiYo has been produced outside of New Zealand, and marks a major step forward in the brand’s international development.

EasiYo’s taste, thick texture and healthy goodness has made it one of the world’s best-selling brands of homemade yogurt. Today it has a strong consumer following in Australia, New Zealand and the Far East with ambitious plans to increase its presence in its largest market, the UK and Continental Europe, with a major business development and marketing drive to increase its distribution and sales.

Alastair Jackson, Managing Director of Ornua Nutrition Ingredients.

Central to this will be an initial five year ‘end-to-end’ partnership between ONI and EasiYo that has seen a joint investment of c. €850,000 to establish a new, dedicated, blending facility at Leek incorporating new, high-speed, sachet-packing lines.

Alastair Jackson, Managing Director of Ornua Nutrition Ingredients, comments: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with EasiYo on its exciting growth strategy and believe that our new state-of-the art facility here in Leek, together with our expertise in blending, packing and sourcing of high-quality ingredients, will provide strong support for its expansion in the UK and European marketplace. Ornua’s strategic objective is to develop opportunities for the export of Irish dairy products and this important partnership with EasiYo demonstrates that we are making strong progress in developing added value routes to market for high-quality, grass-fed Irish milk products.”

ONI’s headquarters at Leek in the UK.

Brian Dewar, CEO at EasiYo Products, says: “We’re delighted to be working with Ornua Nutrition Ingredients as our UK and European supply partner. The UK and EU markets represent a multi-million euro opportunity for us to capitalise on the growing consumer trend of making fresh, wholesome, food at home. Moving manufacture and supply closer to our key accounts means we can respond to our customers’ needs faster, while significantly improving our environmental footprint.  With so many similarities between Ornua Nutrition Ingredients and EasiYo, this partnership was a natural fit for our business.”

Ornua Nutrition Ingredients is part of the Ornua Group’s Ingredients division. It supplies a comprehensive range of high-quality nutrition ingredients to the UK, European and global food industry, leveraging an unrivalled expertise in the blending and supply of dairy powders, alongside a range of other functional nutrition ingredients. It is focused on delivering sourcing, blending, innovation and packing excellence to its customers, which range from leading blue chip FMCG brands to small entrepreneurial nutrition brand owners.  Its core focus is on serving five key sectors: Dairy Ingredients; Bakery; Breakfast Cereals; Health & Wellbeing and Sports Nutrition. For more information visit www.ornuanutrition.co.uk.