Europastry: Starts up new doughnut production plant

Barcelona / ES. (epsa) Europastry S.A., a leading Spanish company specialized in parbaked bread and frozen pastries, has invested 18 million EUR to increase its production capacity in doughnuts. By starting up a new production plant and a freezing warehouse with a capacity for 10’000 pallets, the company has become the largest European manufacturer in this product category, with a total capacity of 300 million units a year.

Thanks to the incorporation of the latest advances in technology and process automation, the plant, in addition, has become the most modern of its kind in Europe. The project, which is being executed in the industrial complex that the company has in Barcelona, will spell out the creation of 100 new work posts once the new plant functions fully.

This investment takes place in the context of Europastry´s strategic plan, which includes a total investment of 37 million EUR for 2009. With its turnover at 360 million EUR and its growth at ten percent in 2008, the company´s main development thrust is innovation in terms of both products and production processes.

Europastry S.A. sold 190 million doughnuts in Spain during 2008, representing approximately 25 percent of the total Spanish market. The penetration of the product in international markets is also increasingly on the rise, with an increase of 32 percent in foreign sales in the course of the last business year. Currently, Europastry distributes its doughnuts at more than 20’000 points of sale on its sales network, and, in Europe, agreements have been arrived at with the main operators in the foodservice and retail channels.