LONGFORD-BASED pet food manufacturer C&D Foods has acquired a 140,000 sq ft canning facility near Amsterdam from Swiss food giant Nestlé.

This plant produces up to 110,000 tonnes of canned pet food annually and replaces canning facilities that burned down at Edgeworthstown, Co Longford in 2006.

To put the deal into context, the old Longford plant produced 75,000 tonnes of pet food a year before it burned down.

In the meantime, CD, which was founded in 1969 by former taoiseach Albert Reynolds, has outsourced some canning production to Denmark – worth about €35 million a year – but this will now switch to the facility at Ijmuiden Port in the Netherlands.

C&D said it would retain 84 workers at the plant, which has employed up to 300 in the past and produced Purina pet foods.

It will continue to produce pet food for Nestlé for the Dutch market but the Swiss group is moving production for other European countries to different facilities.

Speaking to The Irish Times from the Netherlands yesterday, Philip Reynolds, managing director of C&D, refused to disclose the sale price but said C&D would invest €2.5 million upgrading the factory.

“This gives us an opportunity to get back into the canning market,” Mr Reynolds said.

C&D Foods is jointly owned by Mr Reynolds and Larry Goodman’s AIBP food processing company.

It employs 250 staff at its plant in Longford and 90 at a dry foods facility in England. It generates turnover of more than €100 million a year.

The Longford plant produces single-portion pouches and tins for cats and dogs. C&D has invested about €30 million there over the past 18 months, upgrading a facility that was devastated by fire four years ago.

Accounts for C&D Foods Group Ltd, show that the company received €2.45 million net compensation in 2008 from its insurers in connection with the fire in 2006.

It made a profit of €1.2 million on turnover of €92.6 million in 2008.