Danone Opens €70 Million Medical Nutrition Line in France

Danone has inaugurated a new medical nutrition production line at its Steenvoorde site in northern France, completing a €70 million investment announced in 2024. The company describes the installation as the largest medical nutrition line in France, a significant expansion in a category serving people whose nutritional needs cannot always be met through a normal diet.

The line is designed to produce nearly 20 million liters of oral nutritional supplements a year and support close to 150 Fortimel product references. Those figures describe installed annual capacity and product range, not guaranteed sales volumes, so the commercial test will be how quickly demand absorbs the additional output.

Steenvoorde now combines three activities at one location, infant formula, medical nutrition and specialty dairy ingredients. That mix allows Danone to use an established dairy manufacturing base while adding a higher value, more specialized nutrition operation with stricter formulation and quality requirements.

Danone linked the investment to rising demand associated with aging populations and the burden of disease related malnutrition. Those are company stated demand drivers rather than a forecast of the line's utilization, but they explain why medical nutrition is receiving capacity investment even as many conventional food categories face slower growth.

The project also changes the site's energy profile. A biomass boiler inaugurated in February 2026 supports the expanded operation, according to Danone, while the new line adds processing, filling and packaging capacity for products intended for patients and older consumers.

The regional supply footprint is material. Danone says Steenvoorde works with more than 400 partner farms and that milk collection in the surrounding region has increased sixfold over four years. The site therefore connects a specialized nutrition investment with a much broader agricultural procurement network.

Steenvoorde supports more than 400 direct jobs, and Danone reports more than 700 jobs across its wider regional footprint, including the Bailleul dairy plant and Lilpark logistics activity. The company also says it plans to invest more than €600 million across its French sites between 2021 and 2027.

For the food industry, the strategic point is not simply another filling line. Danone is concentrating capital in specialized nutrition, where manufacturing reliability, formulation expertise and clinical channel access matter as much as consumer branding. Future evidence to watch includes line utilization, export reach, product mix and whether regional milk procurement continues to rise.