About the factory
The Solbritt factory has a long history. It begins in 1939, when an oil mill was opened in Rapla, Estonia. Rapla is a picturesque place among forests and fields, far from industrial facilities. Looking at the beautiful landscapes here, it’s hard to believe that only 50 km away is Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.
In the outskirts of Rapla, there have always been many farms producing milk. This is not surprising, because the production of milk and dairy products is very developed in Estonia, especially in this region. Therefore, we were able to quickly increase production, using exclusively milk from the surrounding farms.
During the times when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, our plant was developing. Then it was called the Rapla Dairy Plant. First of all, the volumes of production increased, because about 40% of it was sent to other republics of the Soviet Union. This was common for the Estonian dairy industry of that period.
In 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a law was passed that revived farming. Before that, only collective and small private farms could exist. In Estonia, farming developed very actively: within a year, 800 farmers were running their own business. Free competition between farmers favored the growth of the quality of milk. Our factory got the opportunity to choose the best products as raw materials.
In 1999, the plant was reconstructed, having received the newest equipment at that time. It was solemnly opened after reconstruction by the then President of Estonia Lennart Meri.
In 2005, the plant entered into an agreement with the Nutritec dairy concern and began to produce mainly Nutrilak powdered milk formulas.
Re-profiling production required equipment upgrades. The next reconstruction of the plant was carried out in 2006-07. The plant began to produce infant formulas for the Baltic countries. Since 2007, we have been cooperating with the largest Estonian manufacturer of ready meals and semi-finished products JSC “Salvest”.
2011 was a milestone in the history of the factory. Since that time, it has been called Solbritt and exists in the form of a joint-stock company. Already under the new name, the plant received the ISO 9001:2015 certificate and other certificates confirming the quality of our products.
Today, our plant processes 300-400 tons of milk per day. As before, this is the milk of Estonian farmers from the surrounding farms. Only now all the farms from which we take products are properly certified. And the milk bought from them undergoes additional quality control at our factory.