The Kraft Heinz Company has levelled up its Alfaro, northern Spain, sauce facility with a €70m investment over the last three years, with 39 new jobs created.
New state-of-the-art speed-filling lines and a new pilot plant in the company’s Nijmegen research and development centre have been launched as part of the investment.
Now the facility is one of the most efficient of Kraft Heinz’s European factories, allowing the company to keep up with increasing demand for its Heinz sauces.
Kraft Heinz Company expands Spain facility
The “strategic” investment reflect the importance of the Heinz brand within the company, as well as the ambitious growth plans around the sauces portfolio.
“The expansion of our Alfaro factory marks an important step in our journey to become Europe’s number one player in sauces, in and out of home,” said European and Pacific developed markets president, Willem Brandt.
“With increased capacity and new, cutting-edge technology, we’ll be able to respond more readily to evolving culinary trends and tastes – including the demand for healthier versions of fan favourites, like Heinz mayonnaise.”
Along with producing a range of Heinz sauces, the Alfaro plant processes 25,000t of locally grown tomatoes annually.
Some 600m bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup are sold globally every year, according to Kraft Heinz Company’s vice president for procurement Monica Souza.
How much ketchup does Heinz sell?
Kraft Heinz is the world’s biggest buyer of processing tomatoes, the majority of which are used in the production of its 148-year-old ketchup brand.
The business recently rolled out a new growing technique in Spain to increase yields while boosting soil biodiversity.
Work has been focused on an agricultural technique called cover cropping, where plants are grown for the sake of improving both soil quality and harvest yields.
“Through improved farming, including better management of irrigation water, nutrients, crop protection, soil preparation and optimised harvesting, we’ve doubled our yields in Spain,” said Souza.
