Real Good Food has raised £15.5m to fund the expansion of two food plants by the end of September, including its Renshaw icing factory in Liverpool and Haydens bakery in Devizes.
Both the businesses are seeing significant increases in forward demand; this has been driven by international expansion and the launch of a mainstream retail brand at Renshaw and the acquisition of two major new retail customers at Haydens.
At Renshaw, the company will invest approximately £7m in expanding capacity by over 50% as well as the installation of new soft icings and discs production lines which support the strategy to broaden the offering to mainstream users.
At Haydens, the acquisition of two new major customers has put short term pressure on operational capacity and the Company will therefore invest approximately £8m in order to reconfigure site operations, including blast freezing capability and the installation of a new, automated Yum Yum line. This is expected to take site capacity from its existing level of up to approximately £30m revenues to over £50m of revenues.
Both of these investments, as well as increasing capacity, bring significant benefits in efficiency, upskilling the workforce and mitigating the impact of the forthcoming Living Wage increases.
The majority of the Expansion Plan is expected to be completed by the end of this September.