A MILLION pounds has been spent on extending facilities at Settle Creamery, one of the North Craven's biggest employers.

And bosses at the company have said the multi-million pound investment programme by parent company MD Foods will secure the jobs of the site's 105 employees.

The plant is MD Food's centre for UHT milk production, producing a range of UHT milks, flavoured milks and powdered milks for distribution throughout the country.

It also produces butter by using the surplus cream released during the manufacture of skimmed and semi-skimmed milks at other MD Food factories.

Settle Creamery is an essential part of the Denmark-based MD Foods Group, which is one of the world's biggest dairy groups and in this country supplies one in five cartons of milk sold in every supermarket.

Michael Johnson, Settle creamery's operations manager, who has worked at the site since its opening in 1965, said: "We are one of the area's biggest employers along with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and this investment will guarantee employment for the future."

Over the last eight months work has been carried out to equip the six acre site with some of the most modern processing plant and filler technology available. The work is just three weeks from completion and involves the remodelling of some of the buildings on the current site. They have been refurbished, with the installation of new butter packaging equipment and the introduction of increased cold storage space to cope with increased production volume.

Peter Newman, area manager for butter, has witnessed several developments at the plant since starting work there 1985. He said since MD Foods took over in 1990 there has been a lot of investment ploughed into Settle.

The new facilities will mean the plant can move with the times and offer customers a wider range of butter products.

He said: "We are very keen on keeping moving because the customer demands an ever improving product."

This philosophy is in-line with parent company MD Foods who recently reinvigorated the children's dairy market with the launch of Barbie and Thomas the Tank Engine ranges of yoghurts and fromage frais.

At Settle this outlook is evident by the wide-range of products which the plant is currently able to produce. On the milk side of the business, the plant produces Lactolite, a lactose-reduced milk for people who suffer from lactose intolerance and it also produces lactose-reduced milk especially for cats.

Along with these products, Settle also produces Tastes Like Fresh UHT semi-skimmed milk using a unique process that produces long life milk which actual tastes like fresh milk.

Mr Newman added: "With the expansion, a lot of the money has been put into new packing equipment and one of the machines which wraps the packet butter cost £125,000. So as you can imagine the million pound investment disappears very quickly."

The next stage of investment will be the auto-pilotisation of the butter production. This means the packed butter which is produced will be automatically arranged onto pallets by a special machine.

He added: "I'm very much in favour of the investment in Settle especially since it has been done so well and secured our future. I think it is something to be proud of. It will definitely help existing jobs for I believe if you produce a product well then the customers will continue to buy it."

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