Dutch dairy company Friesland has announced that it will shut down its dairy plant  at Békéscsaba in southeast Hungary on 1 March 2006, according to the Budapest Business Journal.


Friesland’s Hungarian unit, which controls a little less than a quarter of the market, will concentrate production at its dairy in Gyöngyös, northeast Hungary, the paper said. The closure of the dairy in Békéscsaba, necessary because of market trends, will not affect the company’s output, according to the announcement.


Friesland has spent more than HUF3.5bn (US$16.3m) to develop its dairies in Hungary over the past three years. The company’s sales in Hungary approached HUF60bn in 2004, and it purchased almost 350m litres of milk from Hungarian producers.