Britain’s ongoing love affair with coffee to go has led to one of the world’s largest manufacturers of paper cups announcing an expansion of its Hampshire factory.

Finnish food and drink packaging giant Huhtamaki is to spend £7 million on enlarging its Gosport plant which currently employs 370.

Production areas will be doubled in size, and a warehouse and new offices will be built alongside existing facilities. The firm says work should be completed by March, 2017.

The site in Rowner Road has recently seen the installation of state-of-the art machines to make insulated paper cups and earlier this year a new production line for the manufacture of PET containers (the dome-topped tumblers used for smoothies).

Rosemary Mason, managing director, Huhtamaki, Foodservice Western Europe & UK, said: “The UK market in particular is benefiting from increased consumer confidence, with the growing coffee shop culture and more people eating out and ‘on the go’. Over the past three years Huhtamaki has kept pace with the growing demand with increased investment in new state of the art machinery consistently increasing output year-on-year. It’s now reached the point however where the increasing demands for our products has meant that a more significant investment is required, allowing a significant expansion of the Gosport factory site.

“The development of the existing Holbrook site is with the full support of Gosport Borough Council. The new-site will generate new job opportunities, secure employment in the local area and through our various training schemes and successful apprenticeship programmes, we will be able to offer many benefits back to the community which supports us.”

Gosport MP Caroline Dinenage, welcomed the news: “The plans and investment in the development of the factory make for an exciting future for both Huhtamaki and Gosport.”

Huhtamaki, which has 16,700 employees across 69 manufacturing units and 23 sales offices worldwide, say the expansion will take place without interruption to normal production.