€200m investment to create 400 construction jobs

Glanbia the Dairy and food ingredients group has just been granted planning permission to build a €200m milk processing plant at Belview Port in south Kilkenny.

It is expected that up to 400 construction jobs will be supported and at least 100 additional jobs on completion.

The Belview plant is expected to be two-thirds the size of Glanbia’s facility in Ballyragget, which as it stands is Europe’s largest dairy processing facility.

A Glanbia representative said the company welcomed the decision, and that the full implications of Kilkenny County Council’s planning approval — subject to certain conditions — would be detailed at the company’s 2012 half-year results press briefing in Kilkenny on Tursday.

In its conditional planning approval notice, Kilkenny County Council noted that the new Belview facility will incorporate a 11m high two-storey administration and laboratory building sized 1,585 sq m, a 42.5m high five-storey production building sized 19,560 sq m and a series of other large industrial buildings.

The total buildings area is 24,597 sq m approximately. The total development is located on a site encompassing an overall area of 51.01 acres (20.64 hectares approx).