A major Suffolk food company has opened a new £5m distribution centre at its site in Redgrave as sales of its duck products soar.
Family-run firm Gressingham Foods, based at Debach, near Woodbridge, specialises in duck, but has expanded into geese and other poultry and speciality meats.
The new facility near Diss means that Gressingham can store the majority of products and packaging on site rather than using external storage facilities.
The benefits of the new facility include a reduction in flow of traffic on and off site, noise reduction and the shrinking of their carbon footprint.
The new 53,600sq ft building, the equivalent of four Olympic-sized swimming pools, contains a high efficiency refrigeration plant with multi-temperature chamber design.
It also has roof-mounted solar panels to generate electricity for the building. One of the biggest benefits of the distribution centre will be the reduction of HGV vehicles on the roads, meaning less wear and tear, traffic and risk of accidents on the local roads.
It has reduced the weekly movements of trucks by 75 loads across seven days.
Sales of Gressingham Duck, a unique cross-breed of wild Mallard and Pekin grown on Red Tractor approved farms across East Anglia, are up 15% over the last 52 weeks with more than 4.7m shoppers buying duck in the year.
The company employs 550 people, rising to 900 over the Christmas production period, across Suffolk and Norfolk, of which 350 are based at our Redgrave site.
Managing director William Buchanan said: “With the growing popularity of duck the new distribution centre is a key investment, securing the future of the site at Redgrave with the opportunity to expand production of ducks and other poultry in the future.”
His father, Maurice Buchanan, founder and chairman of the firm, officially opened the distribution centre earlier this month, in the company of wife and fellow founder Miriam and their two sons, William and Geoff, who manage the company.
The firm was founded in 1971, and has become the principal supplier of duck to the UK retail sector.
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