A Warrenpoint food company that currently produces 84,000 sandwiches a day hopes to expand substantially thanks to a £19m investment in jobs and automation.

As well as a number of high street cafes, Deli Lites has a large manufacturing base at the Milltown Industrial Estate in the County Down town.

The firm currently employs more than 300 people, but will invest more than £6m to add a further 130 jobs, including skilled positions and 10 management posts.

Among the firm’s customers are supermarkets, coffee chains and international airlines.

Co-founded by husband and wife Jackie and Brian Reid, the firm hopes a further £12.8m investment in automation will help it broaden its product range, increase on-site capacity and reduce waste.

The firm currently has four premises at Milltown, but given its proximity to Warrenpoint Port and the main motorway network, finding suitable industrial space in Warrenpoint has been a long-term challenge.

Because of this, Brian Reid said the expansion will see the further expansion of existing sites rather than the development of a new one.

“We’re going to invest money here in Warrenpoint, in south Down,” he said.

“But space is at a premium in the industrial estate that we are in.

“But we have a plan to invest heavily in the capital, the automation and the AI integration here at Warrenpoint to make it into a world class manufacturing site.

“That’ll allow us to service customers wherever they are in the world.”

Like many manufacturing businesses, finding staff has been a challenge.

“It isn’t at all easy, but we have a great team in the business that will be focused on going out and recruiting these people,” Ms Reid said.

“There’s incentives for our staff to see if they have friends or family that would be interested in a career here.

“This isn’t just operative level on the floor. There are careers here in technical, sales, marketing, commercial, logistics.”

Speaking at Thursday’s launch event, Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald said: “This is a company looking for new markets for their products and this investment will allow them to do that.

“They’ve based themselves locally, they already employ over 300 people locally and are going to employ more people locally so this is a major announcement here today.”

The project has been supported by Invest NI’s Agri-Food Investment Initiative.

Gráinne Moody, Invest NI’s director of food and drink, said: “The food and drink sector is very important to Northern Ireland and has been very heavily dependent on labour.

“But we have a productivity challenge in the sector so this initiative is about helping business to become more competitive, more productive and more efficient.

“Good jobs are obviously an element, but the productivity piece is the key element.

“There is an expectation when you invest in automation that you won’t be investing in jobs.

“But what we are finding is that there is an investment in high value jobs.”