Work has begun to further expand cheddar cheese capacity at Dale Farm’s Dunman milk processing factory at Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

During a visit by members of the NI Institute of Agricultural Science to the facility last Thursday, representatives from the co-op confirmed the second of the two cheese plants at the site will be shut down for approximately two months.

This second plant was constructed as part of the £70m expansion in cheese manufacture and whey protein concentrate (WPC) capacity, announced by Dale Farm in 2024. It came with the initial ability to produce 4t of cheese per hour (20,000t cheese per year). However, space was left to allow for further expansion. Once all the work is complete, the plant will have capacity of 6t per hour.

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The other cheese plant at Dunman produces 9t of cheese per hour and it will remain operational throughout the latest round of work, confirmed the company. Once both plants are fully operational, the factory, which is already the largest single-site cheddar manufacturer in Europe, will see its annual production capacity increase from 85,000t to 100,000t.

Currently around 2.2m litres of milk is processed each day at Dunman, meaning the site takes in around three-quarters of the entire Dale Farm milk pool.

Maturation

The cheese produced at Dunman is packed into 20kg blocks and taken off site for maturation in cold storage before returning for slicing and retail packing. That maturation process takes three months for mild cheddar, six months for medium cheddar and nine months for mature cheddar.

The whey from the cheese-making process is developed into other value-added products, including WPC, and with the surge in the value of dairy proteins, it is an important income stream for Dale Farm. In 2021, the co-op announced it had entered into a partnership to supply WPC to Arla Food Ingredients in Denmark.