Mash Direct in line for top farming award

Friday 31st July 2015


Mash Direct, Northern Ireland's award winning producer of convenience meats with potatoes and vegetables, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Farm Diversification Award organised annually by the UK's top selling Farmers' Weekly magazine.



The company, based on the family farm at Comber in county Down, has become a major exporter of convince meals using ingredients from its own and neighbouring farms at the heart of what is Northern Ireland's leading potato producing region and home to Comber Earlies which have EU protected name status.



Mash Direct is among three UK farms shortlisted in the Farm Diversification Awards which were launched by Farmers' Weekly to showcase and promote diversification initiatives aimed at enhancing UK farms.



The magazine, in its citation for Mash Direct, says :" This business was born out of a necessity to combat the falling profitability the agricultural sector and this relatively small farm faced at the turn of the century. It is a straightforward concept, executed brilliantly: Mash Direct produces vegetable accompaniments for meals.



"The name, conjured up over a family Sunday lunch, no longer fully reflects the dozens of dishes produced. It began with traditional Ulster champ (mashed potato, scallions, milk and butter) and now there are gratins, bakes, croquettes and many more that are retailed in independents as well as giants such as Asda and Ocado.



"It is a real family affair, with Martin and Tracy Hamilton in partnership with their sons Lance and Jack. The offices for the farm and Mash Direct are situated up on a hillside in county Down and the fields run down to Strangford Lough. Martin Hamilton and his team manage 570 hectares (ha) of land on which they grow 60 per cent of the vegetables they need. This acreage has grown rapidly since 2004 when they only had 93ha.



"Raw material is clearly one of the business' biggest requirements. Growing on the farm is pretty non-stop as new veg have to be planted weekly in order to maintain the product flow required.



Martin Hamilton says rotations are key: "Soil is a living structure and if it is intensively used, you will burn it out."



Farmers's Weekly continues: The 40 per cent of vegetables not grown on Martin's farms are sourced from other growers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. They call this their "own grown, known grown" policy.



"All dairy is sourced from Northern Irish farms and their fried products are made with rapeseed oil produced in the UK.



"The whole brand, from packaging through to social media activity, has the "field to fork" message as its core, facilitating education about agriculture and the provenance of food.



"Such a strong brand identity is a major asset to Mash Direct and something they plan to maintain. As part of this, they have rejected contracts to produce supermarket own-brand vegetable dishes.



Beyond the Northern Irish weather, one of the key challenges is keeping up with trends in food habits and retail."



The farm and Mash Direct together emily 170 people. Mash Direct was founded in 2004



Most are gluten free, the range is also additive- and preservative- free, and the products use FSA traffic light labelling to display nutritional information.



The judges liked






  • Involvement in junior entrepreneurship programme


  • Collaboration with other farmers to source raw materials


  • Use of social media to promote British produce


  • Focus on new product development


  • The turnaround of a struggling family farm to create a successful agri-food business


  • The media jumped on this, but Martin held his hands up straight away and worked hard to resolve the problems and repopulate the waterway.


  • A wastewater treatment facility has been installed at the farm and water efficacies have been implemented.



The business is in the early stages of installing an anaerobic digestion plant on the farm, which will take the organic waste and generate upwards of 50 per cent of their in-house electric and steam capacity.



Martin is passionate about supporting the local community and a project he is very excited about is his involvement with the junior entrepreneur programme with local schools. Led by Martin, this is the first launch of the initiative in Northern Ireland.



Currently, 324 pupils from county Down participate in a programme to encourage innovation, creativity and business vision in 10- and 11-year-olds.

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