Dawkins told FoodManufacture.co.uk plans to build a new multi-million pound factory next to an existing plant at Telford would include shifting some production from its nearby Dudley facility.
The project involved significant automation and staff redeployment, so it was hard to say how many new jobs it would create, but it would considerably boost portioning capacity for the business, he added.
However, he stressed that moving some existing portioning from Dudley would not leave it idle. “We will be reinvesting in that area. We’re going to leave behind space, which we can grow into with new or existing products.”
The new Telford factory has a 9,290m2 ground floor area, plus a 2,322.6m2 mezzanine. Most of that space would be dedicated to production, said Dawkins. The existing plant nearby would continue portioning birds as before, he added.
Boost portioning capacity by 25%
He expected the new Telford plant to be fully operational by the end of the first quarter of 2015. However, once it began operations at the end of this year, it would boost Faccenda’s capacity to process birds for portioning by 25% straight away, enabling it to handle roughly 1.3M birds a week, he said.
“But we have engineered in half as much again … so we can grow from 1.3M birds to 2M.” That would depend on business secured, he added.
The birds would largely be supplied by Faccenda’s primary site in Brackley, Northamptonshire, Dawkins confirmed.
Spare production capacity could be used to broaden the company’s product range, “so that we compete across all food groups in our category”, said Dawkins. “At this point we don’t do some ranges of products that our direct competitors do.”
Demand for high quality convenience products offered potential, as did branching out into other protein-based products as well as poultry, he added. “We have a range of ready-to-cook products. It could be any form of meat group that goes into that. We have been quite successful in the last 18 months, so there’s opportunity to expand in that area.”
Faccenda had, in any case, never intended to be restricted to poultry processing and had always aimed to handle other meats, he said.
Change its name
In keeping with the broader focus, the company has announced it would change its name from Faccenda to Faccenda Foods UK on April 28. This also follows the integration of turkey business Cranberry Foods, which it acquired two years ago.
The Telford project would bring greater efficiencies, reducing inter-factory movement of raw materials, Dawkins claimed. “It brings flow … We’ll be much more responsive to demand. It will shorten the production chain.”
In cutting product movements between factories, the plan would reduce the amount of time chilled food components spent in transit and therefore could extend product shelf-life, he said.
The new Telford facility would also incorporate a loading bay, so finished products could be loaded directly on to lorries for delivery to customers, he added. “We are taking cost out of the supply chain and engineering much more flexibility.”
Continued development at Telford would also include a lot more automation, so would not necessarily entail any new jobs, he said.
Faccenda supplies fresh and frozen poultry to retail, foodservice and wholesale customers.