Leading Scottish baker, Warburtons, is set to construct a new £14 million(€20.3 million) extension to its Bellshill bakery, which is set to more thandouble the company's output for the region. The project will take anestimated 10 months to complete by specialists Muir Construction.
The new plant will allow Warburtons to significantly increase its alreadyhigh bread output in Scotland, which the company claims will maximisefreshness for the Scottish consumer.
Once construction is completed, it will enable a further 900,000 loaves perweek to be produced on top of the 600,000 already produced at Bellshill.
As part of this new plant expansion over the next 12 months, the bakersanticipate the creation of around 50 new jobs in Scotland for bakeryoperatives, plant engineers and bakery team leaders. The company alreadyemploys 260 staff across its established plants at Bellshill and Aberdeen."This investment follows the opening of an 8,000 sq ft extension to ourdistribution area in December 2002 and further reinforces Warburtonscommitment to the growing the brand in Scotland," Adam Marson, generalmanager in Scotland.
He added, "The building of a second plant is recognition of of what hasbeen achieved in a relatively short space of time by the teams at Bellshilland in our Aberdeen depot. The development will enable us to bake even morehigh quality fresh bread for Scottish consumers and eventually expand therange of products we produce at Bellshill."
As well as a new plant bakery, the extension will include space foradditional storage for ingredients and will utilise the latest technologydesigned to maximise the potential of an infrastructure originally built in1996.
Warburtons has quickly established itself as Scotland's number one wrappedbread brand. It has an approximate 33 per cent share of spend in the marketplaceWith the help of approximately 3,200 employees in ten different bakeries(soon to be eleven) and nine depots, Warburtons is established as one of thetop ten leading consumer grocery brands in the UK. Headquartered in Bolton,Lancashire, the company produces over one million bakery products each day.