This week, the newly-named dairy processor Kinisla - previously known as Kerry Dairy Ireland - announced a €300 million investment across its business over the next five years.

The investment was announced as part of the launch of the company's new name, as well as its business review for 2025.

According to Pat Murphy, CEO of Kinisla, the bulk of the investment will be going towards boosting the reach of its product portfolio, as well as towards meeting sustainability targets.

Murphy said that consumer foods, as well as nutritional ingredients, will be the main "growth pillars" in the coming years.

The new investment does not appear to be directed towards the agri-business part of the company, although Murphy said: "We feel that [agri-business] is going to be very important in the future, just to make sure that our farmers are getting the best service in terms of whatever they want to buy from us, feed and fertiliser.

"But, really, our growth pillars in the next number of years will be our consumer foods business, our retail business, which today encompasses things like Cheestrings, which is an iconic brand both in Ireland and across the UK, and in wider Europe," he said.

"But also...Charleville is the number one brand of cheese in the country, Dairygold is the number one spreadable butter brand in the country. So, that type of consumer retail portfolio, we believe that there's significant potential to grow that into the next number of years," Murphy said.

He added: "So, we're going to be investing significantly in dairy snaking, as we call it. People want convenience...nutritious, clean label foods.

The nutritional ingredients side of the business is the other main target of the €300 million investment.

Murphy told Agriland: "And then, on the other side, the next pillar of our business is our nutritional ingredients business, which is where we take in milk from our farmers and we try and extract some of the components of that milk and really to significantly add value to those kinds of components.

"We could be talking about the protein in the milk, or the lactose or the carbohydrate...or the butterfat," he said.

The Kinisla CEO noted the "huge surge in demand" for protein across the world today.

"You can see in very supermarket you go into, where you get yoghurts now. A lot of them are high-protein yoghurts or high-protein nutritional bars," he said.

"We have the technologies, we have the capability, we have the application centres where we can come with protein ingredients, whether that's milk protein isolate, milk protein concentrate, or some whey protein concentrates, to target that explosion in the market, and capitalise on that growth phenomenon we see today across the world," he added.

"And so, they're the two biggest focus areas for our investment plan today, the €300 million that we're announcing; so, dairy consumer foods and nutritional ingredients," the Kinisla CEO said.

On sustainability, Murphy said that Kinisla is committed to its targets around emissions reduction.

"So, we will continue to invest in that area... For example, we're putting in some electric boilers into our factories over the next 12 months to try and stop using things like natural gas or diesel, and to use electricity to produce steam and to produce energy for our factories," he said.

"So, they are the three...main pillars of where the investment of that €300 million is going to go over the next number of years, we're saying five years," Murphy added.