Company: Arla
Address: Samian Wy, Aston Clinton, Aylesbury, HP22 5WJ
Established: 2012
Products: Milk
Investment into site: £8 million in a new box packer
Lines: 8 filling lines, 6 processing lines and 90 AGV’s
Output: 1.5 million bottles of milk every day
Employees: 350 members of staff
According to Arla, Aylesbury offers the best logistical and sustainable solution, situated between the farmers who will supply the milk and the customer base.
Senior site director Jo Taylor has been with Arla for more than 20 years and has been working at the Aylesbury site since it opened in 2012.
“We’re the largest fresh milk facility in the UK,” said Taylor. “We produce around 1.5 million bottles of milk every day.
“I think my role here is to enable all of the 350 colleagues that we have on site to produce their best performance every day. What this means is that we have a really efficient factory, which gets us a really good price back for our farmers.”
Flagship site
Considered a flagship site for Arla, Aylesbury serves as a model for the rest of the business to copy – be that new technology or new ways of working demonstrated on site.
“We will be the ones that prove that that works and then bring site directors and teams in to educate them, get them on board and bought in to this technology so that they can then go and roll that out across their sites,” said Taylor.
Last month saw Arla Foods begin work on a new £179 million mozzarella plant at its Taw Valley Creamery in Devon.
Announced last year, the investment into the plant was described by Arla as ‘one of its biggest ever’ in the UK and would enable to dairy co-op to produce Mozzarella in Devon as early as 2027.
Meanwhile, George Hughes-Davies, founder of Daily Dose – the manufacturer who spotted a big market opportunity in cold press juice – shares his journey so far and what he’s up to next.
