A £1.5m investment programme at the Bury St Edmunds animal feed mill will boost production and improve efficiency.

The BOCM Pauls mill, which will have capacity of more than 200,000 tonnes of feed, will be the largest of its kind in Europe. It is a leading supplier of creep, early grower and link feeds for pigs.

As part of the Dutch-based ForFarmers Group, which formally acquired BOCM Pauls on July 11 last year, the enlarged operation will have total European capacity of more than 8m tonnes of livestock feeds.

The investment, which should be completed by the autumn, will also add about 600 tonnes of storage capacity. BOCM Pauls accounts for about two million tonnes of domestic production, of which some is also exported to Europe.

Operations manager, Ketill Lord, said the upgrades and improvements to the creep and compound plants would increase output. Additional process weighers and more carousels would reduce the amount of handling. This work should be completed by autumn.

A new pelleting press and associated feeding and conditioning plant would give higher output and greater efficiency and was planned to be completed this autumn.

Extending the products storage building and the installation of new bulk storage bins would increase storage capacity by about 600 tonnes. Loading times will be reduced by the installation of an additional computer-controlled weighbridge.

'We need to cater for farmers taking larger loads of feed and speed up the turnaround time to maximise efficiency and reduce costs for hauliers and our own fleet,' said Mr Lord.