Work is now underway to build a 65,000 sq ft food processing plant in Coventry.

Mexican food manufacturers Mission Foods is constructing a £16 million development on the Coventry Business Park in Canley.

The American firm is the largest manufacturer of Mexican food products in the world, but currently has no production facilities outside the United States.

It is hoped that the first tortillas will be rolling off the production line by late spring 2000, and a Mission Foods spokesman revealed the huge amount of food that would be produced at the plant.

She said:

"We are expecting the Coventry facility to produce around three million tortillas a week, of which at least half will be sold into the UK market.

"It will not be a case of producing all the food here and shipping it all over the world, primarily this move is to service our British market."

As well as tortillas the facility will produce tacos along with a range of other Mexican food products, and Nick Houghton, managing director of Mission Foods Europe said that Coventry had proved an ideal site.

"We looked at sites all over Europe, before we decided that the UK and more importantly Coventry was the best place for us to be.

"In order to distribute the products around the UK and Europe as intended we needed a very central location with good access and Coventry provides exactly that.

"It is in the middle of a major motorway network and is 15 minutes from an international airport – it really couldn’t be better."

It is expected that the factory will create around 300 jobs, with both management and production positions still available.

The news will come as a huge boost to the owners of a new Taco bar which is planned for the Canal Basin in Coventry.