Nestlé shows off £350 million investment at Derbyshire coffee factory

Nestlé, the world’s largest food and drink company, showed off the results of years of continued investment at its South Derbyshire factory in Tutbury last month.

The high tech factory featured in BBC Two’s Inside the Factory which showcased how the home of iconic Nescafé produces enough coffee for over 4 million cups every day.

Upwards of £350 million has been invested into Nestlé Tutbury, a global ‘Coffee Centre of Excellence’, which in recent years, has included substantial extensions and improvements to the site. Some of these have been:

• In 2012 investment was made in high tech pod technology, making Tutbury the home of Nescafé Dolce Gusto, a single serve coffee pod that’s sold around the world.
• 2013 heralded new facilities including a new canteen, for Nestlé’s 900+ local employees, of whom 70% live within a ten-mile radius of the factory.
• 2014 saw the construction of a brand new freeze-dried coffee production line – capable of creating in excess of 250,000 jars of Nescafé Gold per day.
• In 2015 biomass technology was brought online at Tutbury – waste coffee matter, leftover from the coffee making process is collected and incinerated on site to produce power for the factory.

Tutbury vied with other Nestlé sites around the world for the new investment, and was ultimately successful because of its established track record (soluble coffee has been produced on site since the 1950s)), the scope for expansion at the site, its dedicated very local workforce and the UK’s developed infrastructure for onward export.

Thanks to these investments, Nestlé Tutbury is producing 35,000 tonnes of coffee a year for customers across the UK, the EU and the rest of the world.

Nestlé Tutbury Factory Manager, Eric Heusler said:

Thanks to realising these hard fought investments at Tutbury we now have one of the most productive Nescafé factories. Our top quality coffee, made by our highly skilled local workforce, is exported to over 70 markets around the world – it’s a real success story for British manufacturing.

Hatton vs Tutbury

Nestlé’s Nescafé factory is on the Hatton (Derbyshire) side of the River Dove which forms the boundary with Tutbury (Staffordshire). However, the site is officially called Nestlé Tutbury. This originates from the long history of the site – which began as a dairy factory, making tinned milk from 1901. Back then the only Post Office that could be used to conduct business was across the country boundary in Tutbury, and so the name stuck, and around the world the factory is still referred to as Nestlé Tutbury, despite being officially in Hatton.

Products made at Tutbury

Nestlé currently produces Nescafé Gold, Nescafé Original, Nescafé Dolce Gusto, and Nescafé Azera.

The Nestlé Tutbury factory was originally built in 1901 to produce condensed milk. In 1959 the plant underwent its first transformation and started to manufacture Nescafé soluble coffee.