FDBusiness.com

Ornua, Ireland’s largest exporter of Irish dairy products, has acquired the CoreFX Ingredients division of MCT Dairies and a powder ingredient production facility in Orangeville, Illinois. The acquisition, which has been made in partnership with Denis Neville, formerly of MCT Dairies, is Ornua’s first specialty dry ingredients production facility in the US. The newly named business, CoreFX Ingredients complements Ornua’s existing ingredients production facilities in Saudi Arabia, Spain, the UK and the US, delivering scale and shared dairy technologies.

Headquartered in Chicago, CoreFX Ingredients uses spray drying and dry blending technologies to produce a range of dairy, cheese and lipid powder ingredient solutions for US food manufacturing and foodservice customers. Its serves a wide range of markets including snack foods, sports nutrition, soups/sauces and dressings, infant & toddler nutrition, desserts, bakery and dairy. Core to the business is the ability to design ingredients specific to customer requirements across a range of properties including taste, melt point, texture, mouth feel, cost and shelf stability.

Ornua plans to further increase the scale and capability of the CoreFX Ingredients business through customer-led innovation, dairy technologies and its team expertise. It is investing in the development of the production facility’s technical capabilities and in a Customer Innovation Centre at its Chicago headquarters.

Kevin Lane, chief executive of Ornua, comments: “This acquisition is another key milestone in Ornua’s US expansion programme and is in-line with our strategy to invest in high growth and profitable dairy businesses. CoreFX Ingredients will provide our Ingredients division with greater scale and enhances our capability to deliver bespoke ingredient solutions to our customers. Importantly, we can share its dairy technologies across all of our ingredient operations around the world and in turn drive growth.”

Operating from 16 subsidiaries worldwide, Ornua has sales and marketing teams working in-market across all four corners of the globe from Algiers to Beijing to Lagos and LA. Headquartered in Dublin, Ornua exports to over 110 countries with annualised sales of circa €2.5 billion. The business is structured across two core platforms – Ornua Foods and Ornua Ingredients. Ornua owns the iconic Kerrygold brand, as well as the Pilgrims Choice, Dubliner, Shannongold, Forto, Eureka! and BEO Milk Powder brands. Ornua supplies superior quality dairy ingredients to leading global food manufacturers from some of the world’s most technically advanced manufacturing and pre-packing facilities located in Africa, China, Ireland, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the UK and the US.