Prep House Sauces in Crossgar has won its first business with Aldi, the leading discount retailer in the Republic of Ireland.

Prep House, a family business which has won a string of national awards for its original sauces and dressings, is now supplying its pepper sauce to Aldi for its network of 137 stores across the Republic. The Food NI members, are headed by Paul Bell, the managing director, who took over the management reins in 2015.

Mr Bell, commenting on the company’s latest says:

“Winning initial business from such a prestigious and quality-conscious retail chain as Aldi, which has such an extensive network of successful stores across the Republic, was a marvellous boost for everyone here. This very important business for us resulted when we swiftly followed up a lead from Invest NI’s Drew McIvor.”

“Our approach was well received by the Aldi buyer who was extremely interested and very supportive. We were subsequently invited to pitch several products including the pepper sauce that is now on Aldi’s shelves. Working with Aldi is a tremendous experience. As a result of the outstanding taste of the product and the convenient two-serve sachet, we’ve been invited to create additional sauces for the chain,” adds Mr Bell.

The Aldi listing is Prep House’s biggest deal to date in the Republic and its most significant retail business. The company has successful business especially with chefs, restaurants and hotels in Northern Ireland.

Prep House has experienced exceptional growth to 23 people, including 18 in the modern factory, from the three employed when the business began.

Sales have more than tripled since then. In addition, the company has invested almost £1 million in creating a state-of-the-art factory and new product kitchen close to the centre of the Co Down village, a predominantly rural community.

Awards for taste and quality have also followed from the UK Quality Food and Drink, Great Taste Awards and the Blas na hEireann Irish National Awards. Judges have acclaimed original sauces and dressings including Irish seaweed and sweet and chilli.

“Our objective is to enable more home cooks here, in the Republic and abroad to recognise that when a Prep House sauce or dressing is added they have a delicious meal,” adds Mr Bell.

Prep House is an ambitious business with strong family values from its ownership and the strength of their longstanding reputation in creating original food products and good employment opportunities for local people.

Other smaller food processors in the area, furthermore, benefit from the company’s commitment to source ingredients, such as set sour cream and natural yoghurt, from Farm View Dairies in Castlereagh and Bangor’s Clandeboye Estate for its sauces.

The business has plenty of new products in the pipeline including many influenced by management and the NPD team keeping in touch with market trends concerning diet such as portion sizes, vegan, gluten-free and low-fat.

We set ourselves a New Year’s Resolution to go green by St. Patrick’s Day and we have achieved our goal. Mash Direct are now selling our award winning vegetable and potato side dishes in 100% recyclable trays following a complete overhaul of our packaging.

Our range has been transformed and hit the stores on St. Patrick’s Day with a fresh green start. They will be sold in green or clear plastic trays which are fully recyclable as opposed to the previously used black trays. These cannot be sorted by optical sorting systems used in plastic recycling and as a result, black plastic packaging commonly ends up as residue and ends up in landfill. By moving over to green and clear trays we will be removing over 240 tonnes of black plastic from the food system every year!

Being six generation farmers, we feel attached to the land we farm and we recognise the responsibility within the agri-food sector to protect the environment. A recycling sticker will feature on our packs with an additional message on our sleeves encouraging consumers to recycle and to increase consumers’ awareness of this plastic waste epidemic. We hope that our efforts coupled with the rest of the food and drink sector will set in motion new ways to make the food and drink industry more sustainable.

Chief Operating Officer at Mash Direct, Jack Hamilton said, “Black plastic is one of the most problematic forms of plastic and we feel very proud to have achieved our target to remove it from our packaging. This demonstrates our commitment to sustainability and we hope to continue to lead the ready-meal sector in implementing ambitious measures which will reduce our overall impact on the environment.”

Government must protect our precious food industry from imports of lower standard products

Concerns about the possibility of a trade deal with the US that could lead to imports of chlorine sprayed chicken and hormone injected beef were raised again last week in the wake of comments from Woody Johnson, Washington’s ambassador to the UK.

Since we have what is probably the world’s safest food from our farms and processors it’s essential that we do everything in our power to protect this industry

The claim by the ambassador that the safety of US food is seen in the few cases of food poisoning there was swiftly challenged by Prof. Chris Elliott of the internationally respected Institute of Global Food Security at Queen’s University.

Prof Elliott quoted data from the US Food and Drug Administration showing that 14.7 percent of the US population suffer from a food-borne illness each year. The Food Standards Agency here, however, reports just 1.5 percent in the UK annually suffer such illness.

Continuing to protect our crucially important food industry against products with lower standards must be a priority for the Government in any forthcoming trade deals before and after Brexit. This is also essential because our producers will need to maintain high standards if they are to continue to do business with the rest of the EU and indeed further afield.

While lower food prices may appeal to ministers and some consumers, we cannot afford to lower our guard on the high standards our producers have invested heavily to achieve. Government must ensure that food production criteria for imported foods from the US, and other potential trade partners, meet existing British levels as a condition of entry.

Britain, of course, is a huge market for our food and drink processors and it’s important that the future growth of our most significant industry there is not unfairly disadvantaged by the import of cheaper food from abroad produced to lower hygiene and safety standards.

Food NI, as regular readers will be well aware, is dedicated to initiatives that will help our producers, especially smaller enterprises, develop sales in Britain.

This week, for instance, we’ve organised the participation of a group of companies at the Guild of Fine Food’s Fine Food North show in Harrogate and yesterday saw the launch of our Taste the Greatness presentation at the colourful and hugely successful Borough Market in London. With 250,000 visitors a week it is the capital’s most popular market. It’s the second year in succession that we’ve hosted a presentation of food and drink from Northern Ireland at the market.

Around 25 companies, from many parts of the province, and covering most food and drink categories, are showing hundreds of original products. And we’ll have celebrity chef Paula McIntyre demonstrating how to cook delicious meals using our premium food and drink as ingredients.

Our companies will be central to a major celebration the market’s management has organised to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. It’s going to be a really exciting event for traders and shoppers from London and further afield. Any readers in London for the weekend can sample the best of local produce and celebrate the occasion with us.

We appreciate the support from Invest NI for our drive to take the authentic tastes of Northern Ireland to consumers in Britain.

The drive is helping companies develop contacts with key retail and foodservice buyers and also ensuring shoppers recognise that our produce is local – from the UK – and is from producers operating at least to the same rigorous standards as those that currently apply in Britain.