Deal with Henderson a tasty ‘game changer’ for Glastry luxury ice cream

Sales manager Rory McLaughlin is celebrating with the team at Glastry Farm Ice Cream in Kircubbin this week on clinching a major deal to supply its luxury ice cream and low fat and vegan sorbets to EUROSPAR stores in Northern Ireland.

It’s a significant agreement for the farm-based dairy producer with Henderson Group, Northern Ireland’s top food business.

Based on the family farm of Will Taylor, the founder and managing director of the multi-award winning dairy ice cream and sorbet producer, Glastry has started supplying more than 70 EUROSPAR supermarkets across Northern Ireland with four ice cream flavours in tubs – Yellowman Honeycomb, Vanilla Bean, Lemon Meringue and Chocolate and Salted Caramel, and vegan Raspberry Ruffle sorbet, a double gold winner in the UK Great Taste Awards.

Rory, commenting on the significant deal, says: “This a real game-changer for us because it means our luxury ice cream and sorbet will now be available in most parts of Northern Ireland for the first very time. Ice cream and sorbet lovers, therefore, will be able to enjoy our premium products from a network of highly successful EUROSPAR supermarkets within the market leading Henderson Group.

“What the deal does is to give our premium ice cream and sorbet coverage to most parts of the province through one distribution point. The access provided to the EUROSPAR network will enable us to reach out to many thousands of potential customers with our creamy ice cream and vegan sorbet. While we’ve been working steadily to grow our market reach over the past few years, this agreement makes this possible much quicker than we could have hoped to achieve by our own limited resources as a smaller food enterprise.

“We are immensely excited by the potential of this new business for our range of products which are made from fresh cows’ milk sourced from our own grass and clover-fed Frisian herd and then processed using 75 percent renewable energy. Other ingredients are also locally sourced. As a result, our naturally delicious products, all made on our working dairy farm overlooking picturesque Strangford Lough, have an exceptionally low carbon footprint.”

Ice cream and sorbet production is now virtually zero waste.

Michelle Dineen, Trading Manager at Henderson Wholesale, says the food group prides itself in its support for local artisan producers. “We’ve consistently worked with innovative and bespoke local producers helping them expand and bring their ranges to a wider consumer base.

“We’ve some of the world’s finest food crafters here and the award winning Glastris Farm brand is up there with the best. We’re pleased to welcome Will and his team to our supplier network and look forward to helping them bring their quality range and outstanding taste of ice creams and sorbets to many more shoppers locally,” she adds.

Henderson Group is a local family business achieving 83 rd place on the latest 2019 Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league table of the UK’s private companies.

The Group owns the SPAR, EUROSPAR, VIVO, VIVOXTRA and VIVO Essentials franchises in Northern Ireland. Henderson Wholesale has been distributing food and grocery-related products to the convenience retail sector for over 120 years and is the largest operator of its kind in the country.

The group is committed to sourcing local fresh foods from farmers, growers and suppliers, with over 75 percent of fresh products sourced on the island of Ireland. Glastry Farm Ice Cream was launched by Will Taylor as a diversification project in 2007 on the back of research he had carried out throughout Europe on how best to ensure the long-term future of the 250-acre farm through the development of dairy-based food products.

Glastry – the Irish for townland of the green pastures – has been in the Taylor family for six generations and now rears an extensive herd including 300 milkers producing more than one million litres.

Diversifying further into sorbets resulted in these being vegan, low fat and egg and dairy free.

Glastry Farm has gained a string of national awards for the quality and outstanding taste of its products. The company has also used the expertise at Loughry College in Cookstown, part of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise in developing its range of products which includes 40 ice cream and five low-fat sorbets. It has also benefited from Innovation Vouchers from Invest NI in the link-ups with Loughry. Rory, originally from Cookstown, joined Glastry in August 2019 with a degree in Food Business Management with Marketing from Loughry.

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