Glanbia Ingredients Ireland has broken ground on a processing facility in Ireland that will expand the company's output of milk and milk powders. The facility will process more than 700 million liters of milk and produce 100,000t of dairy powders. The facility is scheduled to go onstream in mid-2015, with most of the production from the facility focused on export markets.

Glanbia is on track to meet its 2013 expectations after a solid performace in the first four months of the year with group revenue up 9 percent compared with the same period in 2012, and volume accounting for 5 percent. The Irish dairy giant has attributed the result to growth in its US Cheese and Global Nutritional division.

The roof is on the world's largest milk-powder dryer in stage two of Fonterra's more than $500 million Darfield, Canterbury milk-processing plant. D2, as the 30.8-ton an hour dryer is known, will take over the position as the world's most powder-productive dryer when it begins processing whole milk powder in August.