The growth of pet ownership during the pandemic has seen the demand for wet cat food in Australia expand, and to meet that demand the Blayney Nestlé Purina plant has installed a new $90 million production line expansion in Blayney, increasing capacity by 120 per cent.
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From the moment the company announced its plans management consulted with staff on how best to lay out the new factory, and project manager Helen Cassidy said that the end result showed the input was valuable.
"In the early stages as we were going through the detailed design phase the employees had input so that it worked for them in terms of the product and process point," she said.
The big difference between this plant and the older one next door is the amount of automation employed.
Robotic arms sort the foils of differing flavours and pack them into the familiar blue boxes of Felix cat food. Those boxes are then packed into the more boxes before the driverless forklifts get to work.
Silently the forklifts glide along the floor, following a predetermined path from point to point lifting pallets of foil-wrapped cat food onto conveyor belts and into storage before they're shipped around Australia and to New Zealand, Thailand and Japan.
Nestlé Blayney Factory Manager Charlene De Wit said the new facility is testament to Nestlé's commitment to local manufacturing and support for the Central West community.
"We are proud to produce quality Purina pet food for our much-loved furry friends across Australia and around the region, right here in Blayney," she said.
"Our expanded facilities will allow us to scale up production of single serve wet cat food by over 120 per cent - as well as the dry cat and dog food we already produce."
Blayney mayor Scott Ferguson said that the Nestle factory would have to be the most technologically advanced factory in the Central West.
"It's great to think that products made here in Blayney are being served up to pets as far away as Thailand and Japan," he said.
Twenty percent of the products are exported and 85 percent of the primary products used are sourced locally said Ms De Wit, and that would continue for a very long time.
"We have an incredibly dedicated and highly skilled team here at Blayney," she said. "By bringing leading technology to our factory and continuing to use high quality ingredients in our product, we are even more confident that we will continue to enrich the lives of pets and the people who love them for years to come."
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
