The news that Northern Ireland's largest food processing company, Moy Park, will invest £14 million sterling (€23.35 million) in its plants in Craigavon, Co Armagh, Moira, and Dungannon is a positive development for a sector under pressure for some years due to overseas competition and sterling's strength.
The most important area in the Northern Ireland food processing industry is beef, which remains a major employer. It managed to survive the BSE crisis by shifting its heavy reliance on exports to negotiating more business with the UK supermarket trade. Farmers claim that it has benefited from low cattle prices and a stock oversupply, but it has also invested heavily in plant and technology to maintain efficiency.
The dairy industry, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of scale, and milk prices above the UK average. The European dairy sector is the scene of continuing mergers and acquisitions. In the face of this, the Northern Ireland industry lacks the economies of scale to compete. One result of this was Dromona Quality Foods' decision to close its subsidiary, Bangor Dairies, with the loss of up to 40 jobs.
Dromona's operations director, Mr Max Davis, said the operation had been incurring losses for some time. He blamed fierce competition in the liquid milk sector and the "uneconomic" size of the Bangor Dairies plant in Co Down.
"The decision in no way affects other Dromona operations ," he said, "which are performing strongly".
But news of the Bangor closure was offset to some extent last month by the £13.8 million investment at the Rye Valley Foods factory in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh which will create 40 jobs over the next two years. The Golden Vale subsidiary employs 90 people producing frozen foods for the European market.
At the opening ceremony, the Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, described the factory as a "significant boost" for Co Fermanagh. Golden Vale now employs more than 700 people in Northern Ireland.
The Moy Park investment, which is backed by a £3 million grant from the Industrial Development Board, will create 140 jobs at the company's Portadown plant, and another 52 at its operations in Moira and Dungannon.
Moy Park, specialists in poultry processing, is part of the Chicago-based OSI group. In April, the firm opened a £13 million processing plant in Dungannon, creating 200 jobs - an investment which was part of a three-year £40 million development. The Dungannon plant produces pre-portioned poultry at a rate of more than half a million birds a week.
Moy Park employs 2,800 people in Northern Ireland and a further 1,200 in plants in France. In its most recent set of published results, Moy Park reported a £3 million loss on a turnover of £174.5 million.
Mr Campbell said the investment was part of a strategy to maintain the firm's overall competitiveness.
