Northern Ireland’s Kennedy Bacon in Sainsbury’s stores

Kennedy Bacon, the specialist Northern Ireland producer of dry-cured bacon, gammon and lardons, is now supplying award-winning products to Sainsbury’s supermarkets for the first time.

Based on a family farm near Omagh in county Tyrone, Kennedy, an artisan producer, is providing three hugely successful lines of bacon to the supermarket network. 

Headed by pig farmer and producer Mervyn Kennedy, the small company, which has won UK Great Taste and Blas na hEireann awards for its bacon, gammon and bacon bits, is supplying traditional dry-cured back, smoky and streaky bacon to Sainsbury’s.

The business is the outcome of a unique agreement between Sainsbury’s and Henderson Group, the leading Northern Ireland food wholesaler, and producer of Spar branded food products featured in its network EUROSPAR and SPAR stores in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Mr Kennedy, commenting on the agreement between Henderson’s and Sainsbury’s, said: “This is an immensely important opportunity for us with one of the biggest supermarket chains here. We appreciate greatly the support from the Henderson Group, now among our most valued retail customers.

“The agreement is a tremendous opportunity for us to raise our profile among regular shoppers at Sainsbury’s. We’d hope to extend this relationship after the agreement comes to an end when the confusion surrounding the bureaucracy at the new Irish Sea border.

“We’ll we doing everything possible to build on this important breakthrough. It’s great to see three of our bacon products in the chillers in Sainsbury’s.” he added.

The agreement between Sainsbury’s and Henderson Group is an outcome of concern over the supply of some food products due to the changes in the post-Brexit trading relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland especially over the next three months.

Sainsbury’s has confirmed that it has “a temporary supply agreement with Henderson Wholesale Ltd”. The supermarket continued: “A small number of our products are temporarily unavailable for our customers in Northern Ireland while border arrangements are confirmed.

“We were prepared for this and so our customers will find a wide range of alternative products in our stores in the meantime.”

Henderson Group said: “We can confirm that we have entered into an agreement with Sainsbury supermarkets that will see both parties working together to ensure availability for our customers.”

Mervyn: Mervyn Kennedy of Kennedy Bacon of Omagh.