Multi-million pound investment at Nature's Way Foods
The bagged salad and prepared fruit processor is pumping £5.7m into sites in the current financial year, after investing in operating capacity and refurbishing equipment in the previous year.
It aims to increase capacity in line with growth in orders and said it had completed design and planning for the new factory, which it intends to open in late autumn 2011.
It is installing a new line for the Lasting Leaf brand, which it launched earlier this year, early 2011, increasing its production capacity in that area by 300%.
The company has also installed an automated product assembly line and a high speed bagger at its Selsey fruit factory. "These investments have increased the factory's capacity by 30%," said head of operations Richard Parr.
"In the south side of the [Runcton] factory two additional assembly lines have been installed, increasing capacity by 20%."
F-Gas rules
NWF is also removing R22 refrigerant facilities at Runcton, in line with EU Montreal Protocol rules effective from January 2015. An outdated refrigerant plant room has been decommissioned, with the load spread to the three environmentally friendly, ammonia-based plant rooms.
Work last year at Selsey included the installation of a new fire alarm and roof barriers to improve working at height and improvement of fire retardant panels.
An optical sorter dedicated to McDonald's was installed, to cut the risk of foreign body product contamination, plus automated pack assembly and fruit processing kit, which boosted capacity from existing machines by 25%.
