Milk men make UK’s ‘biggest ever’ dairy spend

Who Robert Wiseman Dairies
Aim To have room to grow
Spend £80m
What Bridgwater dairy
When December 2007
Target Major retailers and company own-brand milk

Challenge
Robert Wiseman Dairies’ Manchester and Droitwich dairies were being stretched, and the company wanted a bit of breathing space with room to grow. Our existing dairies were running at capacity and beyond, explains Mark McDiarmid, communications executive at the company.

Robert Wiseman invested £80m in building and equipping a new dairy in Bridgwater, Somerset. The new addition brings the total number of Robert Wiseman dairies to seven. It also runs 15 depots.

Strategy
The company invested £80m in building the facility and bringing it to a capacity of 250m litres of milk a year. A total of £45m was invested in the new 325,000m² plant and a further £35m was spent on kit.

In addition to Robert Wiseman’s investment, plastic bottle specialist Alpla UK set up an inplant blow-moulding facility within the Bridgwater site that runs four blow-moulding lines to serve three Stork filling lines. Each bottle has a unique code that can be traced back to the farm and the date and time of manufacture.

The Bridgwater site uses a range of equipment brands, including Stork fillers, Isoma conveyors and roll-container packers, APV processing equipment, PDC sleevers, cap delivery from Asmech and Meypack shrinkwrappers.

Robert Wiseman produces its own-brand dairy products in addition to serving customers such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Iceland. Following the opening of the Bridgwater site, the company was able to pick up a significant bit of business from the Co-op, serving its South East stores. It’s the single biggest investment in the UK dairy industry ever, says McDiarmid.

Plans are also in place for capacity to be expanded to 500m litres a year and an additional £20m has been earmarked for this purpose.

Implementation
Land was broken at the 21-acre Bridgwater site in September 2006 and production started at the end of 2007. Inflation cost the firm a little more than expected, which led Robert Wiseman himself to comment at the official launch in June last year that he wouldn’t want to try to build this facility today.

McDiarmid explains that some of the key personnel made the move to the facility from other Wiseman sites, making up the 350 employees at the Bridgwater site. Recruitment started before the dairy became operational so engineers were able to get an understanding of how the equipment worked from those installing it. Having that point of contact with engineers when it was installed was hugely beneficial, he says. The approach was very similar to that taken at the Droitwich site.

Robert Wiseman already had a relationship with bottle manufacturer Alpla at its Droitwich site, where the volumes the dairy is dealing with are very similar.

Results
Robert Wiseman entered the FTSE 250 Index in December 2008, 14 years after the company was first floated. Plans have already been announced to increase capacity of the Bridgwater facility from 250m litres of milk a year to 350m litres. Preparatory work has started on the fourth production line, but it will be a number of months before this is fully operational, says McDiarmid.

The ultimate goal is to run at a capacity of 500m litres a year by increasing the number of filling lines to five. Staffing numbers are expected to rise to approximately 500 when the plant is running at full capacity. It’s a case of improving efficiencies and focusing on continuous improvement, explains McDiarmid.

Alpla’s sales and marketing director of PET business Peter Kohler agrees. He told Packaging News at the site’s launch in September that it was Alpla’s intention to grow with Robert Wiseman Dairies. He said: If they need more bottles, if they process more milk, we are able to increase equipment.

Next on the agenda is a distribution site in Amesbury in Wiltshire that will serve the Bridgwater site, taking milk to customers in the South East. The company has purchased a nine-acre site at a cost of £4.5m and is working to finalise construction costs. Robert Wiseman plans for the site to be operational by next year.

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