A newly refurbished, onion processing factory with both medium and high care facilities equipped with some of the most modern equipment to provide retail packs of prepared allium crops to the retail sector has came on line in Lincolnshire.

It represents a major commitment by Moulton Bulb Company to widen and enhance its product range for the retail and food service sector.

It was officially opened on Monday, 26 March by Claire Young of Waitrose, which is one of its key retail customers.

The 1350 sq metre premises, designed with expansion in mind, has sufficient capacity to service a large proportion of the total requirement from UK fresh processed retail market.

MBC is confident that this project will succeed and the next phase is already planned to install state–of–the-art fully robotic peeling machines that they, together with their project partners ERC in Holland have been developing over the past 5 years.

Swissvac from Langley Berkshire have provided the form filling machine while ASP Packaging in Watford have done extensive work on modified atmosphere packaging. ERC from Holland have manufactured and installed the bulk of the processing line.

Planning permission has already been granted for a 1,350 sq metre extension which will be built as more capacity is required.

"We recognised a gap in the market as we had the experience in production, processing and packing to lift quality standards," explains director Robert Oldershaw Jnr. "Our product range now available includes both Red and White prepared onions and fresh peeled garlic. While they are currently only offered conventionally, there are plans to offer organics later on in the year.

With the English onion season lasting from July until June, Robert Oldershaw Jnr says the investment is backing MBC’s growers by creating new opportunities to enter a new market and increase production which has risen from 1000 tonnes to 60000 tonnes over the last 25 years.

Out of season onions are imported from major sources such as New Zealand, Chile and Spain to provide continuity, allowing the packhouse to operate year round.

"We also have pioneered many of the crops in our current range, such as sweet onions, echalion shallots and fresh green garlic once considered niche products. And the popularity of these is also increasing so there is potential for prepared versions of these products in the future, " he adds.