Ireland-based Walsh Mushrooms Group is to invest £10m ($13m) to build a new facility in the UK.
The new mushroom growing site will be located in Worcestershire, in England’s West Midlands region.
The company, which describes itself as “one of the largest suppliers of fresh mushrooms across Ireland and the UK” said in a statement on LinkedIn that it is “embarking on a major five-year investment project” to develop a new mushroom growing facility near its distribution centre in Evesham.
Construction will begin in April and the facility is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
The deal was announced at a UK and Ireland business summit in Liverpool, hosted by the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
The company said the move “represents the group’s commitment to be at the forefront of mushroom production whilst recognising the challenges ahead, particularly with labour”.
With this in mind, the company said the new site will “integrate world-leading robotic technology to enhance operational efficiency, streamline processes and significantly reduce labour and energy requirement”.
According to Walsh’s statement, the new facility will be powered by sustainable energy sources.
Alan Walsh, director of the business, said: “After a lot of research, development and planning this is the biggest step change for the mushroom industry in over two decades. This investment underscores Walsh Mushrooms Group’s dedication to innovation, sustainability and expanding its capacity to meet the growing demand of our customers for high-quality British mushrooms.”
Walsh Mushrooms, founded in 1979 and headquartered in Gorey in County Wexford, is a vertically integrated food business. It supplies 500 tonnes of fresh mushrooms to the UK market weekly.
The company manufactures substrate, a substance that fungus uses as food, in Gorey. It has growing and packing operations in Golden, in County Tipperary in Ireland, and at Bury St Edmunds and Evesham in England.
The business employs close to 400 people across its sites.
