Crank it up and cream it off

摘要

If small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are something of an endangered species in UK dairy, as the sector consolidates in order to cut costs, at least part of the challenge they face is to do with innovation and how to support it with capital investment. At the same time, advances in processing technology mean that there are perfectly sound reasons why businesses might want to upgrade or even rebuild their plant, whether for quality reasons, increased capacity or a wider product portfolio. But, even when kept to a relatively modest scale, investment has to be finely-judged.