Parent company Boparan Holdings is to invest £45m in a new poultry processing plant at its 2 Sisters site in Scunthorpe, securing more than 1,600 jobs.
The investment will introduce new robotic cells to create a fully automated process that will increase the capacity of the site by a third to 2.4m birds a week. It will also improve animal welfare, quality and presentation of the finished product.
This latest scheme comes on top of a £10m programme to reduce campylobacter levels in poultry, which has been praised by the Food Standards Agency and has won the approval of major customers.
The Scunthorpe site opened in 1988 and at the time was the largest facility of its kind in Europe at over 800,000 sq ft and processing 900,000 birds per week for fresh, frozen and value added categories. Today the site processes 1.8m birds per week for major retailers.
The Protein division is the anchor of 2 Sisters’ business, producing around a third of all the poultry products consumed in the UK, as well as red meat operations and poultry products in Europe.
The group launched a £150m investment programme in the UK poultry business at the end of last year which, phased over three years, is designed to create a world-class and industry leading estate for poultry manufacturing.