Initiative to Build Flour Mills a Positive Step

Reacting to a Government initiative to incentivise the building of large-scale flour mills, IFA Grain Chair John Murphy said the announcement is positive and in the national interest, but also well overdue as a policy.

IFA has long said that Government must support the re-establishment of a commercial flour milling sector in Ireland.

“This is necessary to support our struggling tillage sector, but also to improve food security in flour, a staple food stuff on which we are too reliant on imports. We believed that some of the funding from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund should have been directed into this area and our annual pre-Budget submissions have also called for supports for this sector in past years,” he said.

“Our native flour milling industry has essentially lain dormant for nearly 20 years but this €15m fund is a big step forward in helping to re-instate some milling capacity in the country. A flour mill project in Ballycarney, Co. Wexford is moving towards construction and hopefully others will follow in coming years,” he said.

“Since 2023, IFA has also supported a PhD student, Noel Banville, on a research study investigating the agronomic and economic viability of milling wheat production in Ireland. This UCD project is funded by a contribution from our grain levy research fund, and results from two years of positive data will be presented at IFA tillage meetings later in the year,” John Murphy concluded.