By Dan Walsh
Ireland’s flour milling industry has entered a new era with the official sod-turning for Slaney Flour -a major facility at Tomgarrow, Ballycarney -last Thursday.
The development, reported as an investment of more than €50 million, has the potential to provide new opportunities for Irish tillage farmers, create local employment and reduce the country’s reliance on imported flour.
Ireland’s newest flour mill is expected to have a milling capacity of 300t/day, wheat storage of circa 24,000t, an innovative square silo design, two intake bays and two outloading bays.
The mill will have a production capacity of around 100,000 tons of grain per year, which will result in about 80,000 tons of flour.
Ballycarney Grain was established in 2011. It is a grain drying and storage facility owned and operated by farming brothers, Andrew and Raymond Kavanagh.
It manages malting barley from 150 farmers across the south-east of the country for Diageo Ireland through Boortmalt.
Hemelter Muehle is a family-owned business milling flour in Germany for almost 140 years. It has been supplying the Irish bakery industry with flour for more than 20 years, currently supplying about 40,000m tons per year.
Ireland imports around 260,000 tons of flour per year. This flour comes from three key markets: the UK, Germany, and France.
Marc Cordesmeyer, managing director of Hemelter Ireland, said that bringing flour production back to Ireland strengthens the entire bakery supply chain, resulting in less dependence on imports, and significantly less exposure to weather events or geopolitical risks.
He said with the location of the mill near ports, there will be a diverse access to grain. “We’ll be able to import grain from Germany and Poland. We’ll have access to Canadian grain. But very importantly, we want to support the growing and use of Irish grain.
“We’ve done, together with the Kavanagh brothers, a number of trials of growing grain here in Ireland which have yielded very promising results of grain that we can use in flour,” Mr. Cordesmeyer added.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon TD said: “This is exactly what we want to be doing for our tillage industry. The collaboration here around the food security piece, around building up the supply chains, and provenance in that regard as well, and adding value for our tillage farmers.”
Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke TD stressed the importance of the bakery sector, with 7,000 employees, 600 “exciting” businesses, and about €1.1 billion in turnover. He said exports are growing steadily – in 2024, they were worth over €330 million.
“What we’re trying to do in Ireland is control the controllables – build up resilience and supply chains, and not to be at the mercy of other economies when you have international shocks,” Minister Burke added.
Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage James Browne TD. said that this project is really important for the area and is a great boost for the tillage sector which is under pressure. “Wexford has a strong history and heritage in flour milling and it’s great to see flour milling coming back,” concluded Minister Browne.
