{"id":774585,"date":"2026-02-19T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/774585\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:00:16","slug":"funding-offered-to-help-establish-up-to-four-new-flour-mills-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/774585\/","title":{"rendered":"Funding offered to help establish up to four new flour mills in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish Government is offering grants<\/strong> to businesses to help set up several flour mills<\/strong> across Ireland.<\/p>\n

It launched a flour mill scheme on Wednesday that will offer up to \u20ac5 million per mill for up to four new mills.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s only commercial mill is in Portarlington in Co Laois and is run by the Irish company Odlums.<\/p>\n

\"PostMinister of State at the Department of Agriculture Martin Heydon (Brian Lawless\/PA)<\/p>\n

Enterprise Minister Peter Burke and Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon said the scheme would support the 8,000 people in the bakery sector and would boost \u201cindigenous\u201d food production in Ireland.<\/p>\n

Around 80 per cent of flour in Ireland is imported from the UK each year, estimated to be around 240,000 tonnes.<\/p>\n

The new mills, when set up, would create the capacity for the production of up to 80,000 tonnes of flour.<\/p>\n

Mr Burke said that after Brexit, the cost of importing flour to Ireland had increased by \u20ac10 million, as it mainly imports the product from the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost-Brexit, we\u2019ve seen a very significant increase in the cost of importation, between transport costs and associated paperwork,\u201d he said at the launch of the scheme at Bread 41 in Dublin City centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a measure trying to cut costs for businesses, trying to assist businesses, build up our indigenous sector and a sector that\u2019s very important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Heydon said Brexit \u201cmade us realise the importance of diversification\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy department has been leading the way on that for about 10 years now, diversifying our dependency on the UK market through a range of different agricultural products.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the scheme would also offer a boost to tillage farmers, who have experienced \u201cthree very, very difficult years\u201d and said the lack of mills was \u201ca big impediment for our farmers in the tillage sector\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said if more mills were set up in Ireland, this would \u201cencourage\u201d more farmers to grow and mill wheat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an element of chicken and egg, pardon the pun, in agriculture in terms of if the processing capacity is there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see in the organic sector what companies have done with oats and in areas of identifying key markets in south-east Asia, and then incentivising farmers to grow exactly what they need for the market they find.\u201d<\/p>\n

He referenced a 2006 decision to close the sugar beet factories in Carlow, Tuam, Mallow and Thurles, which he said was \u201ca mistake\u201d and said the sugar brand Siucra is now owned by a German company.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure we don\u2019t lose other sectors like we lost with sugar, because as an island nation, being able to produce as much as we can here is really important,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Minister of State at the Department of Finance Robert Troy said the scheme would benefit small, artisan bakeries such as Bread 41.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Government is offering grants to businesses to help set up several flour mills across Ireland. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-774585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116096717661162007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}