Finnebrogue Artisan in running for three top industry awards

Finnebrogue Artisan, the Northern Ireland premium producer of the UK's first Flexitarian range of foods, has been shortlisted as Product Developer of the Year in the prestigious Meat and Poultry Processing Awards.

In addition, Finnebrogue Artisan, which is a privately-owned business based at Downpatrick in county Down, has been shortlisted in a further two categories - Plant Manager of the Year and Retail Processor of the Year. The company's Aaron Lynn is shortlisted in the Plant Manager category.

Finnebrogue recently opened the UK's most advanced processing plant, a £25 million investment, and is now Northern Ireland's biggest manufacturer of pork sausages as well as a major supplier of venison dishes.

The company is now a leading developer of meat products for many of the UK and Ireland's top retailers including Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Asda and Tesco.
Karro Foods, which operates Northern Ireland's biggest pork processing operation at Cookstown in county Tyrone, is also shortlisted in the Exporter of the Year category.

The Meat & Poultry Processing Awards recognise and reward excellence and innovation by processors and processing companies who are driving forward initiatives and improvements in both the home and export markets.

The awards are now entering their eighth year and continue to go from strength to strength, attracting top-rate entries from large and small businesses across the entire industry.

Finnebrogue's Funky Flexitarian range for Waitrose features a range of products such as spicy lamb'alafal chipolatas, smokey pork n'bombay beet bangers, lightly curried cauli'nation chicken chipolatas and tasty beef, tomato n'basil bangers.

Funky Flexitarian was developed by Finnebrogue's New Product Development team to meet the needs of the growing flexitarian market in Britain while taking into consideration food intolerances such as gluten and lactose.

The products are ideal for consumers following a healthy lifestyle or wishing to reduce their daily meat content.

Each variety of sausage contains at least 47 per cent nutritious vegetables and legumes, 40 per cent prime British meat, three per cent herbs, spices and seasoning and 10 per cent gluten free breadcrumb.