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Planning permission has been granted for us at Sadel Group to develop a new food processing facility at our site in Easton, Lincolnshire.
Alongside the new 200,000 sq ft food processing development, our fully owned Cold Storage platform Magnavale is currently constructing a £130m, fully automated, 101,000 pallet cold storage facility, due to be completed in Q3 2024. We already operate a further 45,000 pallets of existing cold storage on site. The newly approved plans for a major food production and processing factory solidify the site as the first of our wider Food Hub strategy.
Our Food Hubs are designed to co-locate and integrate food production with temperature-controlled storage, reducing food miles which in turn enhances shelf-life, and reduces both food waste and carbon emissions. This forms part of our wider strategy to invest in the vital and sustainable infrastructure needed to remove inherent inefficiencies in the food supply chain and dramatically improve food security in the UK and across Europe.
On the 16th of May, the planning committee meeting for South Kesteven District Council unanimously voted in favour of our regeneration plans that will see food production return to Easton, Lincolnshire. This will deliver hundreds of local jobs and an annual boost of £16.6m for the local economy.
The food production areas of our site have been mostly dormant since May 2020, when McCains closed one of its production facilities, which led to the loss of approximately 230 jobs. Our site has a long history of food processing and food storage which supported local agriculture and farming communities, particularly the important pea and bean harvests which were made impossible when the facilities to process and store them were closed.
Beyond retrofitting and refurbishing the existing buildings, our recent regeneration activity on the site has already seen the development of a cutting-edge new temperature-controlled warehouse. With the approval of the new facilities, however, we at Sadel Group will transform the site into a highly automated, sustainable Food Hub, supporting the local economy and Lincolnshire’s wider food sector.
Our Easton site will become a hub for sustainable food production and storage, integrating multiple co-dependent services, allowing food to arrive on site as raw materials and be processed, stored, picked, packed, labelled and shipped directly to retailers without ever having to leave. This innovative approach reduces the length and complexity of food supply chains and delivers savings in both carbon emissions and cost to the end consumer.
The Food Hub concept consolidates interlinked but frequently isolated parts of the supply chain, from production to storage and logistics, and delivers new, highly automated, sustainably powered, integrated facilities that enhance the food sector commercial viability and national food security. At Sadel Group, we aim to develop this concept in numerous locations both nationally and internationally.
Sadel Group
28 Avenue Pasteur,
L-2310 Luxembourg