Tetra Pak opens €25 million cheese production facility in Poland

Tetra Pak has opened a €25 million site with sales, engineering and manufacturing facilities for cheese production solutions in Poland.

Tetrapack cheese production facility in Poland

The Tetra Pak cheese production site in Poland

Expertise in cheese

Building on the company’s global expertise in cheese, the centre has full scale engineering capabilities, from cheese making process design to mechanical, automation and electrical engineering through to manufacturing of processing solutions itself.

Employing more than 350 people across engineering, production and business management, the 12 000m2 site in Olsztyn, north-eastern Poland will double Tetra Pak’s cheese-making solution capacity in the country and allow extensive equipment testing.

Ola Elmqvist, executive VP, Processing Solutions & Equipment at Tetra Pak says: ‘As the only company able to deliver a completely seamless integrated solution for cheese production, this investment demonstrates our commitment to help customers meet rapidly changing consumer demands and capture emerging growth opportunities.’

 Global cheese market

The overall global cheese market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 2.3 per cent, reaching 31 000 kilotons by 2023, largely due to semi-hard cheese and mozzarella demand. Tetra Pak supports customers in their development of new production methods and processes that meet trends for cheese as an ingredient, on-the-go snack and high protein diet addition.

‘One of the main reasons we chose Olsztyn is its excellent location in the heart of a region with a great dairy tradition and excellent food engineering talent base. This means we’re perfectly placed to serve not only our customers in Poland but also wider Europe,’ adds Elmqvist.

Embodying the company’s commitment to environmental sustainability, the site has been designed and constructed in full compliance with Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) requirements. Among its many features to minimise its environmental footprint, the site has a fully automatic “weather control” system that manages ventilation and sunlight, and a rainwater collection system that supplies water for site maintenance.