Hannan Meats in deal with Fitzgerald Group in Newcastle

Northern Ireland's Hannan Meats is supplying gourmet sausages, bacon racks, meat, including burgers, and pork to top restaurants within the Sir John Fitzgerald Group across the North East of England.

Hannan Meats, a winner of no fewer than 17 gold stars in last year's Great Taste Awards, began providing bacon racks and venison sausages to the group, based at Newcastle Upon Tyne,during December.

The Northern Ireland meat business shipped three tonnes of bacon racks and two tonnes of venison sausages to the group, which subsequently ordered a further tonne of sausages in early January and is now listing the bacon rack as a 'signature' dish in the restaurants.

In addition, the Fitzgerald Group has since expanded the relationship with Hannan to include beef, pork and burgers.

The Fitzgerald Group is a major restaurant business with over 20 outlets in the North East of England including a recently opened outlet in the centre of Newcastle.

The contract for sausages was Hannan's first for this product range in England and is the result of an extensive marketing drive for its wide range of beef and pork by the Northern Ireland company, which is based at Moira in County Down.

The campaign to increase awareness in England of the company's range of award winning meats included hosting a visit, last year, by a delegation of top chefs from the North East to its processing operations in Northern Ireland. This has produced for a wide range of Hannan's beef and lamb.

Hannan Meats has a rapidly developing foodservice operation in Newcastle and last year opened a Meat Merchant deli in the city's Jesmond district, modelled on a successful retail shop at its Northern Ireland location. The retail initiative in Newcastle is proving to be an outstanding success.

Peter Hannan, managing director of Hannan Meats, commenting on the new business in the North East of England, says: "Our business is booming in the region because top chefs there now recognise that we offer them a exceptional range of quality and richly flavoured meat products especially our Hereford and Shorthorn beef, bacon racks and pork chops.

"The sausages are a relatively new development for us. What we have done is to use our experience in meat processing to create new and distinctively rich flavours, which seem to have captured the attention of chefs, diners and increasingly shoppers at our Meat Merchant store in Newcastle city centre.

In particular our spicy Italian sausage, winner in a recent awards competition for innovative meat products, is proving immensely popular with Newcastle's large Italian community.