The multi-million-pound investment sees the company increase its capacity as it develops further opportunities within both the UK and overseas markets.
The investment is expected to allow the business to meet current growth opportunities and enable supply to new customers who potentially face the threat of food shortages and delays due to the UK’s eventual exit from the EU.
Pasta Foods managing director Gordon Chetwood said the business was well placed to guarantee uninterrupted supply of pasta with this investment and the much larger stocks of durum wheat it has bought to protect its customers.
“We are seeing a great demand for our high quality, locally manufactured pasta. Not only do we produce our pasta on world class state of the art production lines, we have our own semolina mill which provides our customers with an assured supply chain, and being local in the UK, is invaluable to our customers, many of whom are in the chilled food-to-go and ready-meal sectors,” he said.
Pasta Foods has been manufacturing high quality dried pasta since 1956, using durum wheat milled into semolina from its own semolina mill in the east of England. It sells to food manufacturers both in the UK and overseas.
“Many people may not have heard of Pasta Foods as we are effectively an ingredient manufacturer. However, through our extensive customer base we feature in some of the world’s best loved brands and own-label ranges. Chances are if you eat pasta salads, pasta ready meals, canned products or instant meals you will have eaten a product made by us.”
Chetwood added that the business is seeing a rise in demand for pasta from its customers. “Our customers receive high quality products, through a stable supply chain assuring their end customers of product availability,” he said.
“We can adapt to changing order requirements so our customers are always fully satisfied. That, in addition to innovative NPD, short lead times, technical support and a state-of-the-art production facility means that we are already seeing an increase in customers moving away from Italian pasta. In fact, we believe that consumers are becoming more aware of where their food is coming from and we will hopefully see British pasta on pack as a product benefit in the future.”
