A POULTRY feed manufacturer planning to invest £20 million in Rosyth will produce 50 new jobs in the area.

2Agriculture Ltd want to build a state-of-the-art facility on almost five acres of waterfront land owned by Forth Ports Limited.

The new mill near the Port of Rosyth would see 300,000 tonnes of poultry feed for chickens, ducks and turkeys made each year.

Gavin Berry, managing director, told the Press: “It’s a £20 million overall investment and will create 50 jobs in the Rosyth area.

“The actual facility itself will produce about 300,000 tonnes of poultry feed a year. It will be state-of-the art machinery and the most modern facility of its kind in the UK.

“Rosyth was chosen as we looked at the distances between all our farms, our customer base – as we supply commercial poultry farms – to find where would be the best place to reduce haulage and minimise our carbon footprint as much as possible.

“The best location if you put a pin in the centre of that map, was actually in the River Forth; but an underwater mill was never going to work, so Rosyth was the next best!

“It’s also ideally located for access to the major road network.”

He added that the high-tech mill would see a “mixture of jobs created between skilled operatives, mid-skilled jobs and HGV drivers, plus office-based admin and managerial staff”.

The manufacturer’s current mill at Edinburgh Airport, which has been in operation since the 1970s, will cease operating should plans be approved for their proposed Rosyth site.

Their planning application will be submitted to Fife Council next month.

The Press previously reported that the site would be operational 24 hours a day and include two 20 metre-high floodlights.

The nearest residential property is around 400m away and the planning agents said odour nuisance was expected to be “negligible” and there would be “minimal” nuisance from the additional lighting.

They added that the mill would be constructed from the “latest technology” to achieve an energy-efficient process.

Raw materials would be brought to the site and stored in silos, before being ground and mixed with liquid ingredients, heated, treated and pelleted to meet the customer’s requirements.

The finished material is then transferred to the on-site storage bins ready for distribution.

If approved, the mill will be around 70 metres long and 42m in height, with a single-storey warehouse attached to the side of it.

Mr Berry concluded: “I’m very proud of the plans and the investment that we could bring to the poultry industry in Scotland.

“I think the poultry industry has its challenges, as does every industry, but I do believe poultry has a promising future.”