THE country's largest dairy plant is setting new standards in the processing of milk. The factory is one of the most modern plants of its kind in Europe and is now processing more than 1m litres of milk a day.

It is owned by farmers across the west who put in £11m of their own money for its construction.

The Westbury site began commissioning milk in May and the full-scale production of skimmed milk powder and butter started in August.

The official opening of the £45m state-of-the-art factory, planned for September 30, was postponed because computer problems meant it failed to meet necessary standards.

This has been resolved and the plant is now meeting all expectations.

A spokesman for United Milk said: "We failed to meet the 60 per cent processing capacity over seven consecutive days. We concentrated on getting things working and decided to postpone the opening until next spring."

The factory, which has set new production standards, will eventually process more than 2.5m litres of fresh milk every day.

The plant is the biggest of its type in the country and has the capacity to produce up to 40,000 tonnes of butter and 75,000 tonnes of skimmed milk each year.

It will process more than 800 million litres of milk per year 5.5 per cent of the UK milk quota into skimmed milk powder, butter and cream.

The spokesman said: "The process capacity is growing and the final products are of a very high quality. The quality of the product and the plant has more then met our expectations.

"We are now getting milk from all over the region and we are already supplying outlets in the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Sudan and Thailand." Because the milk market is depressed, farmers are only getting 15 pence a litre, but the spokesman hopes this will improve soon.

He said: "There is no guarantee that it will improve because prices are generally low in the industry at the moment."

Around 100 people are now employed at the site, but there are no plans for a major recruitment drive for another two to three years.

The spokesman said: "We have a fully recruited team and there are no plans to employ anyone else until we enter the next development phase.

"Everything is going forward as we planned, and we now have an efficient, modern factory."