Minister for Agriculture Opens New €12m Monaghan Mushrooms Plant
The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Brendan Smith TD on Monday officially opened a new €12 million state-of-the-art mushroom growing facility which has been built by Tyholland Mushrooms Limited, an associate company of Monaghan Mushrooms at their headquarters in Tyholland, on the outskirts of Monaghan town.
The new facility, which will generate 150 jobs, is made up of 18 individual mushroom growing houses that together provide a total growing area of 21,306 square metres. When operating at full capacity, it will have an output of 115 tonnes of mushrooms per week, equal to an annual output of 5,980 tonnes, the vast proportion of which will be exported to the UK.
In development since June 2009, the new facility can justly be regarded as the most modern development of its kind in Europe. Significantly larger and more productive than conventional mushroom growing tunnels, each unit is equipped with the latest technology used in mushroom production, features that include energy-efficient geothermal heating, cooling and humidification systems to guarantee a consistently high quality of product.
Inside each of the 18 houses, compost is distributed automatically on to a fully automated system of racking which, if laid end to end, would span a distance of 15kms. Automated hydraulic trolleys enhance the picking process and reduce the time taken to prepare the product for delivery thereby ensuring that customers will be guaranteed fresher, better quality product.
Its location adjacent to the company’s pack house – where mushrooms are boxed and prepared for delivery to customers – will be another key factor in delivering improved freshness and quality to customers.
With the coming on stream of this new facility, Monaghan Mushrooms will expand its overall output of mushrooms sufficient to enable the company to supply more mushrooms to the Irish and UK mushroom market. In the UK, the largest mushroom market in Europe, Monaghan Mushrooms holds a 45 percent share of the market which is valued in total at €425million (Stg£350million). In Ireland, the company has a 17 percent market share.
Full story in the Northern Standard
