Lakeland Dairies is to invest €36 million in an expansion of its milk powder processing operations at Bailieboro, Co. Cavan, creating 81 food industry jobs over a five year period. A further 180 construction jobs will be generated during the building, installation and commissioning phases for the new processing facilities. The co-operative processes over 800 million litres of farm produced milk annually which it exports to over 70 countries worldwide. Following the abolition of milk quotas later this year, annual milk supply to Lakeland Dairies is expected to increase by 40% to over one billion litres by 2020. The expansion will see the installation of a new seven tonne per hour milk drying facility at Bailieboro, where total milk powder production capacity will increase to 19 tonnes per hour. Lakeland currently produces 80,000 tonnes of milk powders a year and this will rise to 130,000 tonnes on completion of the project in 2016. Group CEO of Lakeland Dairies, Michael Hanley, explained that growth in the in the global dairy ingredients business “is being fuelled by consumer trends and developments in food industry sectors where we have access to key markets and customers throughout the world". “Over the past five years we have transformed our processing capabilities and have also underpinned our future export potential with new global logistics facilities. The expansion of our operations at Bailieboro will create further advantages for our milk producers. In particular, we see continuing opportunity in the areas of infant formulae, dairy proteins and health related nutritional products, among other categories, where we are a globally recognised leading supplier of the highest quality milk powders,” he added.