Ireland’s largest dairy exporter Ornua has acquired US dairy business CoreFX for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the region of €5 million.

Illinois-based CoreFX Ingredients is a division of the bigger MCT Dairies, and represents Ornua’s first specialty dry ingredients production facility in the US.

It uses spray drying and dry blending technologies to produce a range of dairy, cheese and lipid powder ingredient solutions for US food manufacturing and food service customers.

The acquisition complements Ornua's existing ingredients production facilities in Saudi Arabia, Spain, the UK and the US, and is designed to give the business scale as well as leverage shared dairy technologies.

Ornua has earmarked up to €10 million to further increase the scale and capability of CoreFX through customer-led innovation, dairy technologies and its team expertise.

"This acquisition is another key milestone in Ornua's US expansion programme, and is in line with our strategy to invest in high-growth and profitable dairy businesses," said Ornua boss Kevin Lane.