Dairy Crest in extra £2 million investment at Harper Adams University centre

The company cut the ribbon on its new site at Harper Adams University, near Newport, last month, with Princess Anne visiting to mark the opening of the new £4 million facility.

Now the company, whose products include Cathedral City cheese and Clover spread, says it is to boost investment in its innovation arm, which is centred on the new Shropshire site, to help drive growth in the business.

The department has been set up with the aim of helping Dairy Crest boost sales through its innovation arm by 10 per cent per year.

Chief executive Mark Allen added: "This state-of-the-art facility will help drive our ambitious target of 10 per cent of sales each year coming from innovation in the previous three years.

"This year, helped by the relaunch of Clover, we achieved 11 per cent of sales from recent innovation across our four key brands.

"The innovation centre consolidates all of our technical and research expertise and equipment in one place and allows us to benefit from cross-fertilisation of people and ideas with the university which is a leading centre of food and agricultural research."

So far it has introduced a new Clover product – Clover Simple – which has no artificial ingredients, brought coconut and rapeseed oil sprays to market, and introduced a new milk purchasing contract for its Davidstow Cheddars milk suppliers.

Now the innovation centre is to be boosted with a £2 million budget increase for its research into the effect of GOS – a prebiotic food ingredient – on animals, in a bid to conduct field trials and find new commercial applications for the product.

The announcement came as part of Dairy Crest's annual results announcement for the year to the end of March. Combined volumes of four key brands, including Cathedral City and Clover, were up two per cent, but overall revenue was down six per cent to £422.3 million.

Pre-tax profit increased by 23 per cent to £45.4m and it is raising its final dividend by two per cent from 15.7p to 16p.

Mr Allen said: "Although we expect food price deflation to persist in the short term, the business is well positioned to deliver profitable and sustainable growth. We are making progress with all of our four key brands and the continued investment gives me confidence that we can continue to grow their market share."

The year also saw Dairy Crest sell its dairies business and complete a programme of significant investment in functional ingredients manufacture in Cornwall.