Which company is the first to move into phase two of Southglade Food Park?
The contract packing and cold pressed oil producer Phoenix Group has expanded its food manufacturing operations with a new high-care food processing facility in Nottingham.
The new packing site at Southglade Food Park, Bestwood, allows Phoenix to provide a range of new outsourced services for its clients including batch heating and boiling, emulsification, dry and wet ingredient blending and high-shear blending.
Production began at the premises in January. The 2,600 sq ft site adds to the company’s existing 26,000 sq ft facilities already in operation.
An additional seven full-time roles will be created at the new site this year, adding to Phoenix’s 25 existing employees. The number of new jobs could rise to 30 by 2017.
Ben Guy, managing director of Phoenix, said: “This venture marks a really exciting step for us as a business as we expand further into high care food manufacturing. Having this additional space lets us offer a whole range of new services to our customers who are increasingly demanding more specialised production techniques from their suppliers that only high-care sites can deliver.
“We’ve got our first new customer in place already and have several others, existing and prospective, who are interested to find out what we can now do for them on top of our existing filling and contract packing services. With the flexibility of two sites we know we can deliver this work by making the best use of both, as needed, to meet demand.”
Phoenix’s new site will be fully connected with its existing suite of bespoke apps – launched last year at a cost of £25,000 – which give production staff and customers real-time access to cloud-based quality management and stock control systems.
The company has made a five-year commitment to the new premises through a lease arrangement supported and made possible by Invest in Nottingham.
Simon Hall Growth Hub manager at Nottingham City Council said “Phoenix are achieving growth through innovation which is a great example for other businesses to follow. We’re delighted that this expansion is taking place in Nottingham and that we’ve been able to play a part in making this happen. We’d be very pleased to talk to any other Nottingham companies with similar growth ambitions”.
Southglade Food Park is a commercial development dedicated to specialist food production. Following a recent £6m expansion funded by Nottingham City Council and the European Regional Development Fund, there are 12 newly extended and refurbished units on site ranging from 900-4,000 sq ft in size.
