Irish dairy company Ornua has opened a €20m cheese manufacturing facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The facility will produce white cheeses for the Saudi Arabian market, which is considered to be the fifth largest dairy importer in the world.
It will will also act as the central hub to access high growth dairy markets in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.
Ornua's new cheese facility will make use of the technology developed by Ornua and Teagasc to produce a range of fresh white cheese for the bakery sector, retail delis and foodservice customers.
The technology facilitates milk ingredients to be recombined for fresh white cheese production.
An innovation hub will be built in the facility which will co-develop customized white cheese solutions with customers.
Teagasc Food Research program head Mark Fenelon said: "We are delighted that this inclusive research and development approach by Ornua and Teagasc has proved effective.
"The technology underpinning this venture was developed at the Teagasc food research centre, Moorepark and was adapted and managed by Ornua as part of a highly integrated collaborative research program to develop the current suite of local cheeses. It marks a new approach to cheese manufacture involving the production of cheeses from reassembled milk without whey expulsion."
In the past 18 months, Ornua has made significant progress in investments through acquisitions and infrastructure development in Africa, China, Ireland, Germany, Spain, the UK and the US.
The Riyadh facility development follows Ornua's acquisition of Ambrosia, a dairy manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China. Ambrosia supplies dairy products such as sour cream, yoghurt and speciality cheeses to high-end retail and food service markets in Shanghai.
Image: The new facility will produce fresh white cheese. Photo: Courtesy of Suat Eman/FreeDigitalPhotos.net.