Major dairy producer Lactalis Canada has announced the reopening of its manufacturing plant in Sudbury, Ontario as a plant-based milk facility.
The site was a liquid milk processing plant for 60 years, but shut down in 2022 when Lactalis Canada announced plans to convert it into a 33,150 sq. ft facility for the production of plant-based beverages. The company said at the time that fluid milk had seen a “long-term volume decline”, reducing the profitability and sustainability of the plant.
The Sudbury facility will now produce Lactalis Canada’s new plant-based milk brand, Enjoy!, which was launched this May. The milk alternatives are unsweetened and high in protein, with six varieties currently available — Oat, Oat Vanilla, Almond, Almond Vanilla, Hazelnut, and Hazelnut & Oat.
The reopening of the facility was celebrated on June 28 with an event attended by company executives, government officials, and community partners. This included a tree-planting ceremony and an employee celebration.
Jobs were protected during the conversion of the facility, and the site will continue to employ the same number of people as previously.
“We are constantly following the consumer”
Lactalis Canada is not the first dairy producer to convert a facility to plant-based milk production; earlier this year, Danone announced that one of its dairy yogurt plants in France had been modified to produce oat milk instead. Danone has previously said it is attempting to expand its plant-based business in order to meet sustainability goals, and this may also be a motivator for Lactalis Canada.
“While our core business is dairy, as an innovation leader and as demonstrated by our forthcoming expansion into plant-based, we are constantly following the consumer and continually seeking opportunities to innovate and respond to the market,” said Mark Taylor, President and CEO of Lactalis Canada, in 2022. “Our purpose is to enrich and nurture the lives of Canadians and this holds the same for our new offering, which will provide consumers with complementary high-quality plant-based products that will benefit from our current capacity and capabilities as well as our rich and long-standing dairy expertise.”
