Funding offered to help establish up to four new flour mills in Ireland

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, Press Association

The Irish Government is offering grants to businesses to help set up several flour mills across Ireland.

It launched a flour mill scheme on Wednesday that will offer up to €5 million per mill for up to four new mills.

Ireland’s only commercial mill is in Portarlington in Co Laois and is run by the Irish company Odlums.

Enterprise Minister Peter Burke and Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon said the scheme would support the 8,000 people in the bakery sector and would boost “indigenous” food production in Ireland.

Around 80 per cent of flour in Ireland is imported from the UK each year, estimated to be around 240,000 tonnes.

The new mills, when set up, would create the capacity for the production of up to 80,000 tonnes of flour.

Mr Burke said that after Brexit, the cost of importing flour to Ireland had increased by €10 million, as it mainly imports the product from the UK.

“Post-Brexit, we’ve seen a very significant increase in the cost of importation, between transport costs and associated paperwork,” he said at the launch of the scheme at Bread 41 in Dublin City centre.

“This is a measure trying to cut costs for businesses, trying to assist businesses, build up our indigenous sector and a sector that’s very important to us.”

Mr Heydon said Brexit “made us realise the importance of diversification”.

“My department has been leading the way on that for about 10 years now, diversifying our dependency on the UK market through a range of different agricultural products.”

He said the scheme would also offer a boost to tillage farmers, who have experienced “three very, very difficult years” and said the lack of mills was “a big impediment for our farmers in the tillage sector”.

He said if more mills were set up in Ireland, this would “encourage” more farmers to grow and mill wheat.

“There is an element of chicken and egg, pardon the pun, in agriculture in terms of if the processing capacity is there.

“We see in the organic sector what companies have done with oats and in areas of identifying key markets in south-east Asia, and then incentivising farmers to grow exactly what they need for the market they find.”

He referenced a 2006 decision to close the sugar beet factories in Carlow, Tuam, Mallow and Thurles, which he said was “a mistake” and said the sugar brand Siucra is now owned by a German company.

“We want to make sure we don’t lose other sectors like we lost with sugar, because as an island nation, being able to produce as much as we can here is really important,” he said.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance Robert Troy said the scheme would benefit small, artisan bakeries such as Bread 41.