POLAND – Tetra Pak has opened a US$27.8 million (€25 million) site in Poland, with sales, engineering and manufacturing facilities for cheese production solutions.
Building on the company’s global expertise in cheese, the centre has full scale engineering capabilities, from cheese making process design to mechanical, automation and electrical engineering through to manufacturing of processing solutions itself.
Tetra Pak said that the 12,000 square-meter site in Olsztyn, north-eastern Poland will double its cheese-making solution capacity in the country and allow extensive equipment testing. The facility will employ over 350 staff across engineering, production and business management.
Ola Elmqvist, Executive Vice President, Processing Solutions & Equipment at Tetra Pak said: “As the only company able to deliver a completely seamless integrated solution for cheese production, this investment demonstrates our commitment to help customers meet rapidly changing consumer demands and capture emerging growth opportunities.”
Building on the company’s global expertise in cheese, the new facility will help to boost cheese production solutions and help its customers meet the growing consumer demand.
The overall global cheese market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 2.3%, reaching 31,000 kilotons by 2023, largely due to semi-hard cheese and mozzarella demand.
Tetra Pak supports customers in their development of new production methods and processes that meet trends for cheese as an ingredient, on-the-go snack and high protein diet addition.
“One of the main reasons we chose Olsztyn is its excellent location in the heart of a region with a great dairy tradition and excellent food engineering talent base.
“This means we’re perfectly placed to serve not only our customers in Poland but also wider Europe”, adds Elmqvist.
Embodying the company’s commitment to environmental sustainability, the site has been designed and constructed in full compliance with Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) requirements.
Among its many features to minimise its environmental footprint, the site has a fully automatic “weather control” system that manages ventilation and sunlight, and a rainwater collection system that supplies water for site maintenance.
Tetra Pak was aslo recently recognised for its work in the Product Footprinting category at the Carbon Trust’s Annual Corporate Sustainability Summit, in London.
Tetra Pak was awarded for its role in reducing the carbon impact of a customer’s packaging.
By switching to a partially plant-based material for both its Tetra Brik and Tetra Prisma carton packages, a 21% reduction in the carbon footprint of the packaging for the product was achieved.
