Linden Foods wins top award with unique M&S meal

A unique Pork Saltimbocca developed by Linden Foods in Northern Ireland for Marks and Spencer has been hailed as a taste winner. The pork dish, the most recent in a series of innovative products for M&S, picked up the top award for Best Product in the prestigious Northern Ireland Food and Drink Awards.

Celebrating its 13th year, the awards offer a platform to showcase and reward those involved in Northern Ireland's world-class food and drink sector, in which Linden Foods is a leading player. The Dungannon, county Tyrone red meat processor has been successful in this category before and this year has claimed several notable accolades.

Elaine Willis, Linden's head of innovation and business development, says:

"It is a real testament to our team at Linden Foods to have won Best Product at the very prestigious NIFDA Awards.

"We have extremely skilled staff that are constantly innovating and researching consumer trends and eating behaviours. We pride ourselves on creating high quality classical dishes with the best ingredients possible; the secret really is keeping it simple.

"We have a great relationship with M&S who challenge us and we work very hard with them to create new and exciting products that customers want to buy."

Ryan Lemon, M&S head of region for Northern Ireland, adds: "We are absolutely delighted at the success of Linden Foods in the Best Product Category at the NIFDA Awards with an M&S product.

"The relationship with our local meat supplier spans more than 15 years and the team at Linden Foods continues to impress us with their innovation and new product development.

"In our thirteenth year as a Platinum sponsor, we will continue to sponsor a selection of the beef livestock classes at next month's Balmoral Show and we look forward to welcoming, in association with Linden Foods, our suppliers, producers and customers on to our stand."

Pic Caption: (L-R): Elaine Willis - Head of Innovation & Business Development, Paul Johnston - Operations Director & Nicola Swift, Product Developer M&S.