Princes food & drink factory investment charted by firm’s boss

“Princes has been on a big transformational journey in the last few years,”​ says Mackintosh. “£160m just in those three sites.”​

Factory manager Rob James presided over Princes’ £80m Canning Excellence project, which began in early 2017 at the company’s Long Sutton production facilities.

“It’s come in two clear phases,”​ says Mackintosh. “The first phase deals with our new pea plant and also a lot of investment in terms of our canteen, offices and welfare facilities.​

Ingredients processing​

“The second phase of that dealt with large raw material new warehousing with coldstore and investment in our ingredients processing equipment, a very large hydrostat that required the second largest mobile crane in the UK for its installation, water plant, utility upgrades and a new canned ready meal line.”​

At Princes’ juice production facilities at Cardiff, £60m has been invested, Mackintosh continues. “That’s our single biggest investment in our drinks site and we have installed seven new production lines and two refurbishments of existing lines.”​ The Cardiff investment included ‘significant investment in our warehousing, inbound and outbound and significant investment in new ingredients processing equipment that takes us into new capabilities’.

At Erith, a £24m investment has been made at the seed oil site that is a 50/50 joint venture between Princes and Archer Daniels Midland. That project has nearly doubled capacity there, Mackintosh says and has involved a new production line capable of producing 5 litre bottles of cooking oil. The tank farm there has been upgraded, inbound and outbound capacity has increased and the finished goods warehouse there has doubled in size.