Creamery wins deal with major retailer in Asia
Fivemiletown Creamery managing director Mervyn McCaughey with a selection of the company's speciality cheeses which will be sold in major supermarkets across Asia.
Fivemiletown Creamery, Northern Ireland’s only speciality cheese producer, has won business from one of Asia’s biggest retail operations.
The artisan creamery is to supply a range of handcrafted and award-winning soft cheeses, including its unique Boilie Irish goats’ cheese and creamy cheddars to Dairy Farm International Holdings, headquartered in Hong Kong.
Dairy Farm operates major supermarkets in Hong Kong, including the Wellcome chain, the region’s biggest retailer, as well as in Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Wellcome has more than 240 stores and serves more than 14 million customers every month in Hong Kong.
Dairy Farm and its associates operate some 5,250 outlets, employ over 81,000 people and had total annual sales in 2010 exceeding US$9 billion.
Owen Jones, Fivemiletown Creamery’s business development manager, described the contract, secured through a leading distributor, as “a huge boost for the creamery in one of the most dynamic international markets”.
Mr Jones said: “The contract with Dairy Farm gives us a marvellous springboard for growth in a marketplace which has a rapidly growing and affluent middle class increasingly seeking new taste experiences. China, for instance, already has 960,000 sterling millionaires.
“The nation also has 90 cities, each with a middle class of more than a quarter of a million, representing a huge market opportunity for western luxury products including premium cheese.”
Two years ago Fivemiletown Creamery was awarded Red Tractor status – an independent verification that a product has been made to high quality standards from farm to retailer.
“Achieving Red Tractor status has become an important selling point for us because it demonstrates consistent quality throughout our operation, from farm to retailer.
“As a result of our developing focus on exports, we are now selling our soft cheeses in 15 global markets including Hong Kong,” added Mr Jones.
Fivemiletown Creamery is a farmers’ co-operative which sources high protein milk for its soft cheese products from almost 70 dairy farmers in Tyrone’s Clogher Valley and other regions of Northern Ireland.
The company, founded in 1898, currently employs 88 people and sells around 90 per cent of its soft cheeses outside Northern Ireland.
Regular customers include major retailers Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Tesco, Harrods and Harvey Nichols, Walmart and Dean and Deluca in the US, and Galeries Lafayette in France. In addition, the creamery supplies products to around 4,000 delis and farm shops in Britain.
Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster congratulated Fivemiletown Creamery on the Asian contract win.
She said: “It is an excellent example of a well-established, forward-looking company that has recognised the need to continue to add value to its services in order to remain competitive.”
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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