diff --git a/xloader/Dockerfile b/xloader/Dockerfile
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68aa58d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/xloader/Dockerfile
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+# use the official Python 3.10 (bookworm slim) image as the base image
+FROM python:3.10-slim-bookworm
+
+# Tag passed through via the Makefile
+ARG CKAN_TAG=${CKAN_TAG}
+ARG XLOADER_VERSION=${XLOADER_VERSION}
+
+ENV TZ=UTC
+ENV APP_DIR=/srv/app
+ENV SRC_DIR=${APP_DIR}/src
+ENV CKAN_INI=${APP_DIR}/ckan.ini
+ENV PIP_SRC=${SRC_DIR}
+ENV CKAN_STORAGE_PATH=/var/lib/ckan
+ENV GIT_URL=https://github.com/ckan/ckan.git
+
+# Set the CKAN database connection string as an environment variable, plus set the process string for the HEALTHCHECK
+ENV ckanext.xloader.jobs_db.uri="postgresql://ckandbuser:ckandbpassword@db/ckandb"
+ENV WORKER_PROCESS="ckan -c /srv/app/ckan.ini jobs worker"
+
+# Customize these in the environment (.env) file if needed
+ENV CKAN_SITE_URL=http://ckan-dev:5000
+ENV CKAN_CONTAINER_URL=http://ckan-dev:5000
+ENV CKAN__PLUGINS image_view text_view recline_view datastore xloader envvars
+
+# Set the working directory
+WORKDIR ${APP_DIR}
+
+# Set up timezone
+RUN echo ${TZ} > /etc/timezone
+
+# Set LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 will ensure that all locale-dependent operations in the current environment 
+# will use English language and United States cultural conventions with UTF-8 character encoding
+ENV LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
+
+# Set the locale          
+RUN apt-get update
+RUN apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y locales
+RUN sed -i "/$LC_ALL/s/^# //g" /etc/locale.gen
+RUN dpkg-reconfigure --frontend=noninteractive locales 
+RUN update-locale LANG=${LC_ALL}
+
+# Install system libraries
+RUN apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y \
+        apt-utils \
+        git \
+        libpq-dev \
+        g++ \
+        linux-headers-generic \
+        libtool \
+        wget \
+        procps
+
+# Create the src directory
+RUN mkdir -p ${SRC_DIR}
+
+# Copy setup file(s) to the image
+COPY setup/start_background_worker.sh ${APP_DIR}
+
+# Install  the CKAN application, the dependency packages for CKAN plus some confiquration
+RUN cd ${SRC_DIR} && \
+    pip3 install -e git+${GIT_URL}@${CKAN_TAG}#egg=ckan && \
+    cd ckan && \
+    cp who.ini ${APP_DIR} && \
+    pip3 install --no-binary markdown -r requirements.txt && \
+    # Install CKAN envvars to support loading config from environment variables
+    pip3 install -e git+https://github.com/okfn/ckanext-envvars.git#egg=ckanext-envvars && \
+    # Create and update CKAN config
+    ckan generate config ${CKAN_INI} && \
+    ckan config-tool ${CKAN_INI} "beaker.session.secret = " && \
+    ckan config-tool ${CKAN_INI} "ckan.plugins = ${CKAN__PLUGINS}"
+
+# Install the XLoader extension
+RUN cd ${SRC_DIR} && \
+    pip3 install -e 'git+https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-xloader.git@master#egg=ckanext-xloader' && \
+    pip3 install -r ckanext-xloader/requirements.txt && \
+    pip3 install -U requests[security]
+
+# Create a local user and group plus set up the storage path
+RUN groupadd -g 92 ckan && \
+    useradd -rm -d /srv/app -s /bin/bash -g ckan -u 92 ckan && \
+    mkdir -p ${CKAN_STORAGE_PATH} && \
+    chown -R ckan:ckan ${CKAN_STORAGE_PATH}
+
+# Create entrypoint directory for children image scripts
+ONBUILD RUN mkdir /docker-entrypoint.d
+
+HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=10s --start-period=5s  --retries=3 \ 
+  CMD pgrep ${WORKER_PROCESS} > /dev/null || exit 1
+
+#CMD ["/bin/bash"]
+CMD ["/srv/app/start_background_worker.sh"]
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/xloader/Makefile b/xloader/Makefile
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7171918
--- /dev/null
+++ b/xloader/Makefile
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+.PHONY: all help build build-all push
+SHELL := /bin/bash
+CKAN_VERSION=2.10.4
+XLOADER_VERSION=1.0.1
+CKAN_VERSION_MAJOR=$(shell echo $(CKAN_VERSION) | cut -d'.' -f1)
+CKAN_VERSION_MINOR=$(shell echo $(CKAN_VERSION) | cut -d'.' -f2)
+TAG_NAME="ckan/ckan-base-xloader:$(XLOADER_VERSION)"
+
+all: help
+help:
+	@grep -E '^[a-zA-Z_-]+:.*?## .*$$' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | sort | awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*?## "}; {printf "\033[36m%-30s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2}'
+
+build:	## Build CKAN XLoader images , `make build`
+	echo "Building $(TAG_NAME) images"
+	docker build --build-arg="CKAN_TAG=ckan-$(CKAN_VERSION)" --build-arg="XLOADER_TAG=$(XLOADER_VERSION)" -t $(TAG_NAME) --no-cache .
+
+push: ## Push CKAN XLoader images to the DockerHub registry, `make push`
+	echo "Pushing $(TAG_NAME) image"
+	docker push $(TAG_NAME)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/xloader/setup/start_background_worker.sh b/xloader/setup/start_background_worker.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..8d9878b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/xloader/setup/start_background_worker.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+if [[ $CKAN__PLUGINS == *"xloader"* ]]; then
+    # Add ckan.xloader.api_token to the CKAN config file (updated with corrected value later)
+    echo "Setting a temporary value for ckan.xloader.api_token"
+    ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI ckan.xloader.api_token=xxx
+fi
+
+if grep -qE "beaker.session.secret ?= ?$" ckan.ini
+then
+    echo "Setting beaker.session.secret in ini file"
+    ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI "beaker.session.secret=$(python3 -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe())')"
+    ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI "WTF_CSRF_SECRET_KEY=$(python3 -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe())')"
+    JWT_SECRET=$(python3 -c 'import secrets; print("string:" + secrets.token_urlsafe())')
+    ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI "api_token.jwt.encode.secret=${JWT_SECRET}"
+    ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI "api_token.jwt.decode.secret=${JWT_SECRET}"
+fi
+
+echo "Set up ckan.xloader.api_token in the CKAN config file"
+   ckan config-tool $CKAN_INI "ckan.xloader.api_token=$(ckan -c $CKAN_INI user token add ckan_admin xloader | tail -n 1 | tr -d '\t')"
+
+# Run any startup scripts provided by images extending this one
+if [[ -d "/docker-entrypoint.d" ]]
+then
+    for f in /docker-entrypoint.d/*; do
+        case "$f" in
+            *.sh)     echo "$0: Running init file $f"; . "$f" ;;
+            *.py)     echo "$0: Running init file $f"; python3 "$f"; echo ;;
+            *)        echo "$0: Ignoring $f (not an sh or py file)" ;;
+        esac
+    done
+fi
+
+# Run the background worker
+ckan -c $CKAN_INI jobs worker
\ No newline at end of file