Milestone for Northern Irish Skea Eggs with Marks & Spencer

Skea Egg Farms in Northern Ireland has reached a milestone of 194 local production units and, from July 2018, will supply over 70 percent of the eggs sold on the shelves of Marks & Spencer stores across the UK and Ireland.

Family-owned Skea Eggs, based in Dungannon in county Tyrone, now supplies over 63 million eggs to M&S each year.

Steve Hayes, sales director at Skea Eggs, says: "We started to supply to M&S in 1997 in just seven stores. Today, Skea Eggs can be found in all M&S stores across the UK and Ireland.

"All the eggs are produced in Northern Ireland by local farmers, which underlines the real commitment of M&S to the province."

Skea Egg Farms, which employees 136 people at its Tyrone packing centre, supplies M&S with free range, organic and omega 3 eggs.

Since 1997, M&S has only sold free range eggs and in 2002, became the first ever food retailer to use only free-range eggs in all its products including prepared meals.

Mr Hayes continues: "Our vision is to produce a high quality, welfare friendly, commercially viable and fully traceable product and we work very closely with our farmers to ensure we deliver just that.

"We now have 156 local units producing free range eggs from over 1.2 million free range birds, and 38 local units producing organic eggs from over 110 thousand birds."

Steve McLean, M&S Head of Agriculture adds: "At M&S, we are totally committed to animal welfare and believe that the better the standards of welfare and care to the birds, the better the quality end product. Customers are able to buy free range eggs from us, knowing that we only source from trusted farms that treat their hens well."