Gluten-free innovator wins business in United Arab Emirates

Bfree, an award winning manufacturer of gluten and wheat free products, has won business in the Middle East worth around £50,000 for its products.

The company has a production operation at Crossmaglen in county Armagh and is headquartered in Dublin. The new business in the United Arab Emirates is the outcome of a major marketing drive to grow international sales of its products including several which has won UK and Irish awards.

David Waldron, Bfree's European & Middle East business development manager says: "Securing fresh export deals is vital to the success of our business. Our sales in this region have increased by 50 percent since last year due to new deals with both Spinneys and Lulu Supermarkets in the UAE.

"We have also been recently listed with Choithrams, a major UAE supermarket, following participation at Gulfood. Invest NI's in market support in the UAE and Europe has been vitally important to our business and has enabled us to gain access to key contacts and essential resources in markets which seemed way out of our reach."

BFree's success springs from a commitment to create a range of breads that offered outstanding taste and quality. The company worked with a research team in University College Cork which specialises in gluten-free bakery and developed a bread range which it launched in 2011.

Within six months the range had become the market leader in the "free-from" bakery category and this spurred the company on to add new products to the range. These include a gluten-free multigrain wrap.

Among its many other achievements are securing listings with almost 400 Asda stores in the UK; being launched in Dunnes Stores in April 2013 and immediately becoming a best seller in the gluten-free category and then launching in Tesco and Musgraves in Ireland; and O'Briens Sandwich bars has extended its gluten-free offering with the wraps.

The wrap is also now listed as a "Healthy Extra B" by UK magazine Slimming World where many other wrap brands fail to meet their nutritional requirements.

The multigrain wrap innovation is now the fastest selling free-from product in the majority of retailers, with volume sales increasing steadily week-on-week. "The product has opened the doors of many retailers in Ireland and abroad to us as it is a unique product that cannot and has not been replicated".

The company is exporting to the US and is looking at other export markets.