C&D Foods buys Dutch canning facility from Nestle

This plant produces up to 110,000 tonnes of canned pet food annually and replaces canning facilities that burned down at Edgeworthstown, Co Longford (Ireland) in 2006. This plant produced 75,000 tonnes of pet food a year before it burned down.

 

In the meantime, C&D, which was founded in 1969 by former Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds and is 50% owned by beef baron Larry Goodman.

 

The company has outsourced some canning production to Denmark – worth about €35 million a year – but this will now switch to the facility at IJmuiden Port in the Netherlands.

 

Philip Reynolds, managing director of C&D, said the company planned an immediate investment of €2.5m in the Dutch plant.

 

Of the 100 staff originally employed at the plant, 84 will be retained. Nestle previously used the factory to make its Purina range of pet foods.

 

C&D will continue to make Purina pet food at the factory under licence from Nestle for the Dutch market.

 

However, that contract will only comprise about 10% of the facility’s output, since Nestlé is moving production to other locations in Europe. Most of the other output will initially be shipped to the UK and Ireland.