Dale Farm’s Tyrone cheese factory to receive £70m investment

Dale Farm, one of Northern Ireland’s biggest agri-food businesses, is investing £70m to upgrade its cheese factory in County Tyrone.

It said the development would allow it to increase output by 20,000 tonnes a year, while also reducing its carbon emissions.

The investment will include a new high-speed automated cheese slicing line and an expanded warehouse.

Group chief executive Nick Whelan said it was a “transformative” investment.

Dale Farm is a farmer-owned co-op which produces its own branded products such as Dromona butter, as well as providing ingredients to other companies.

Last year it returned a profit of more than £35m on turnover of £728m.

The cheese factory at Dunmanbridge near Cookstown employs 345 people and is supplied by 760 of its 1,280 milk producers.

Work on the upgrade is already under way, with completion scheduled for February 2025.

Meanwhile SSE, one of Northern Ireland’s largest suppliers of renewable energy, has announced a significant investment in a battery storage facility in County Tyrone.

It has bought a fully consented, but unbuilt, project from Heron Energy at Derrymeen near Dungannon.

It would be capable of storing up to 200MWh of energy for Northern Ireland homes and businesses at times of peak demand.

SSE said that when called upon, the system would be capable of providing back-up energy to the equivalent of over 135,000 homes in Northern Ireland for up to two hours at a time.

Battery Energy Storage Systems are seen as an increasingly important part of the electricity grid as they can help manage the peaks and troughs in renewable energy sources such as wind.

Mark Ennis, chair of SSE plc in Ireland, said the delivery of the Derrymeen battery project would make an important contribution to SSE plc’s overall Net Zero Acceleration Programme.

The project secured planning consent from Mid Ulster District Council in 2023 and would connect to the grid via an underground cable to the existing nearby Tamnamore substation.

Subject to final approval from SSE, it could be operational by the end of 2026.