The London-based company, which specialises in continental sweet bakery products and speciality breads, has converted three industrial units into a modern bakery facility and despatch centre.
Two new food production areas will cater for the firm's specialist breads and sweet bakery product contracts, while the dispatch centre enables more cold storage and distribution flexibility.
The project has also created 40 permanent jobs with the firm identifying skills from agency staff to create new full-time positions.
‘Increase its capacity’
Grain D'Or general manager Simon Sloan said: “This project has allowed Grain D'Or to increase its capacity by almost double, continue its sector-leading technical standards and retain high levels of quality and food safety.
"As a firm, the increased scale of food production area gives us the ability to offer a wider range of products and become a more efficient and flexible operation within the market.
“We can also respond easier to seasonal volume and growth, which often dictates the greater profit-yielding market growth areas for this industry to tap into.”
The development now brings Grain D'Or's business premises for retail and foodservice sectors at Townsend Industrial Estate to more than 9,290m2.
Grain D'Or worked with Chalcroft Construction on the project.
‘Like a jigsaw puzzle’
Sloan added: “The project was like a jigsaw puzzle fitting all the pieces together to ensure our food production facilities carried on operating while Chalcroft modified existing buildings and installed equipment and it was all completed on schedule.”
A second phase of the project, worth £250,000, will add 557m2 of dry goods storage offices and a new food development facility, and is expected to be completed in August this year.
Grain D'Or’s own-label products are supplied to retailers and foodservice customers in the UK, as well as the Republic of Ireland, Scandinavia and mainland Europe.