Top UK award for Finnebrogue Artisan in Northern Ireland
Finnebrogue Artisan in Northern Ireland gained one of the top awards in the prestigious Meat and Poultry Processing Awards. Aaron Lynn, the company's plant manager, was named Plant Manager of the Year in the awards, the most important in the UK meat and poultry industry.
Karro Foods, which operates Northern Ireland's biggest pork processing operation at Cookstown in county Tyrone, won the Exporter of the Year category.
Based at Downpatrick, county Down, Finnebrogue Artisan is one of Northern Ireland's most innovative and successful meat processors. The family-owned and managed company is now among the biggest producers of sausages in the UK. It also specialises in venison dishes sourced from its own herd.
Finnebrogue is a leading developer of products for many of the UK and Ireland's top retailers including Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Asda and Tesco.
The company, last year, opened the UK's most advanced processing plant, a £25 million investment, and is now Northern Ireland's biggest manufacturer of sausages.
Among innovative foods recently developed by the company is its range of Funky Flexitarian 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 created 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.
The Meat & Poultry Processing Awards recognise and reward excellence and innovation by processors and processing companies which are driving forward initiatives and improvements in both the home and export markets.
The awards are now entering their ninth year and continue to go from strength to strength, attracting top-rate entries from large and small businesses across the entire industry.
