£4 Million Project Completed at Grain D’Or
Grain D’Or – part of the Fletchers Group of Bakeries – has completed a £4 million expansion of its food manufacturing facilities to increase production capacity by 40 per cent and enhance technical standards. The London-based company, which specialises in continental sweet bakery products and speciality breads, has converted three industrial units into a new state-of-the-art bakery facility and despatch centre.
Two new food production areas will cater for the company’s specialist breads and sweet bakery product contracts, while the dispatch centre allows for greater flexibility for cold storage and distribution.
The project has also meant the creation of 40 permanent jobs with the company identifying skills from previous agency staff to create new full-time positions.
Grain D’Or general manager, Simon Sloan, says: “This project has allowed Grain D’Or to increase its capacity by almost double, continued its sector-leading technical standards and retained high levels of quality and food safety. As a company, the increased scale of food production area provides us with the ability to offer a wider range of products to our customers and become a more efficient and flexible operation within the market.”
He adds: “We can also respond easier to seasonal volume and growth, which often dictates the greater profit-yielding market growth areas for this industry to tap into.”
The development now brings Grain D’Or’s business premises for retail and food service sectors at Townsend Industrial Estate in Park Close NW10, to more than 100,000 sq ft.
Grain D’Or worked with Chalcroft Construction on the six month project, minimising disruption to existing production schedules and maximising the efficiency of the new plant.
An additional, second phase of the investment project, worth £250,000, will add 6,000 sq ft of dry goods storage office accommodation and a new food development facility, and is expected to be completed in August next year.
Grain D’Or’s highly-popular own-label products are supplied to major retailers and food service customers in the UK, as well as the Republic of Ireland, Scandinavia and mainland Europe. Grain D’Or’s plant is Grade A certified by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and capable of high output, making hundreds of millions of croissants a year.
