Businessman of the Year award for Mash Direct leader

Jack Hamilton, a director of Mash Direct, a company specialising in vegetable sides and convenience meals, has been named Northern Ireland's Businessman of the Year 2017.

Hamilton, a director of the family business, which is based on a farm at Comber in county Down, was selected by Ulster Tatler magazine, the region's leading social and lifetsyle publication. The choice was made by public vote in a poll carried out in the magazine.

Established in 1966, the Ulster Tatler is now Northern Ireland's longest established and most widely read monthly. It has coverage of events in the Northern Ireland social calendar as well as local fashions. The tone of the magazine is very much to look at the positive side to life in Northern Ireland.

Mash Direct has been at the forefront of the development of healthy and convenient vegetable side-dishes such as: mashed potato, champ and carrot and parsnip mash, over the past 13 years.

The company has won a series of national and international awards for its premium quality and innovative products including the prestigious UK Food Manufacturing Excellence Award as well as the Gulfood Innovation Award.

Mash Direct is now among Northern Ireland's most successful companies with developing export business in Europe, the Middle East and the US. It supplies most of the UK and Ireland's leading supermarkets.

The company has a portfolio of 40 products, 19 of which have won Great Taste Awards.

Mash Direct is an independent, family owned farming and food production enterprise launched by Martin and Tracy Hamilton in 2004 at their family farm.