Milk Link to Invest £20 Million to Expand Lockerbie Creamery
Milk Link, the UK’s largest cheese maker owned by over 1,600 dairy farmers, is to invest £20 million to transform its Lockerbie Creamery in Scotland, enhancing both its capacity and capabilities and making it one of the UK’s leading Cheddar production facilities. The investment will make Lockerbie the biggest dairy processing facility in Scotland and one of the largest and most advanced creameries in the UK. The site will benefit from a major redevelopment with the installation of the latest processing technology increasing annualised production by 12,000 tonnes to over 37,000 tonnes of cheese per annum.
The major investment being made at Lockerbie will not only secure the long term future of the creamery but also help to provide a strong platform for the expansion of dairying in South West Scotland and the North of England. In line with the new creamery’s increased processing capacity, Milk Link will now be actively recruiting additional Members in Scotland and the North of England to supply Lockerbie.
The investment will enhance Lockerbie’s product consistency and productivity. It will complement Milk Link’s other major Cheddar creameries – Taw Valley in Devon and Llandyrnog in North Wales – and enable the business to meet the growing demand from leading retailers, food service businesses, food processors and export customers for its high quality range of customer label and branded cheeses, butters and dairy ingredients.
“Our investment at Lockerbie will transform the creamery and reinforce Milk Link’s leadership position in the production of high quality British cheeses,” says Neil Kennedy (pictured), chief executive of Milk Link. “At the same time, we believe it provides a timely boost to the dairying sector in South West Scotland and the North of England as we increase the volume of milk from the region going into value added dairy processing.”
He continues: “The capital investment programme will be the largest undertaken to date by Milk Link and indeed is one of the largest investment projects in cheese manufacturing seen over the last 20 years in the UK.”
It follows on from Milk Link’s major investments at TawValley in relation to a next generation whey processing plant and the building of a new soft cheese creamery at Cornish Country Larder’s Trevarrian site, both of which will be fully operational this Autumn. Work at Lockerbie will start later this year and will be completed by Autumn 2012.
