Meat Trade Journal
Chicken processor Moy Park has been presented an International Safety Award with merit for promoting high standards of health and safety management in the workplace.
This is the second year Northern Ireland’s Moy Park has picked up the accolade, which was this year delivered to its Convenience Business Unit
Mike Mullan, Moy Park’s HR Director of Europe, commented: “We are delighted to have received this great accolade once again. It is fantastic for Moy Park to sit among leading businesses from across the UK and the rest of the world. At Moy Park we are committed to continually driving forward health and safety practices for our employees and to maintaining the very highest standards. We are honoured that these high standards have been acknowledged with this prestigious award.”
The awards, run by the British Safety Council, are in their 57th year.
Neal Stone, acting chief executive of the British Safety Council, congratulated Moy Park on its success. Stone said: “Awards have an important role to play in shining a light on those employers who are taking sensible and effective steps to ensure the health, safety and welfare of their workers, celebrating their efforts and encouraging other businesses everywhere.
“The International Safety Awards rightly reflect the importance of aiming for good standards of health and safety at work. Moy Park’s Convenience Business Unit should rightly be proud of its achievement.”
Moy Park is following the roast-in-the-bag trend with two new flavours of whole chicken roasts.
The ‘Good Kitchen’ range includes ‘Extra Tasty’ and ‘Garlic & Herb’ ready-to-roast chicken.
Moy Park said the range was created to target a growing market for added-value fresh chicken products.
Briege Finnegan, brand marketing manager for Moy Park, said “Our new roast-in-the-bag range is the first retail-ready, ovenable whole chicken product to use this innovative packaging technology.”
However, retailers, including The Co-operative and Marks & Spencer, are opting for roast-in-a-bag packaging for chicken products to reduce instances of campylobacter as a results of the Food Standards Agency’s clampdown on the bug.
“The packaging self-vents and enables the chicken to self-baste throughout the cooking process, which results in more succulent meat and an enhanced flavour. We developed the range to offer consumers a convenient shelf-to-oven roast-in-the-bag chicken, making it ideal for those who don’t like touching raw meat or don’t have time to prepare a raw chicken from scratch. Due to the innovative nature of the packaging, the chicken browns in the pack without having to open it during cooking. The cooking juices are retained within the pack, which means consumers will be able to create flavoursome stocks and gravy,” Finnegan added.
The Moy Park ‘Good Kitchen’ Roast in the Bag range will be available in retailers across GB from May 2015. RRP is £5.
Moy Park has developed a state-of-the art poultry development house, which it said will allow it to deliver “significant improvements” to its poultry rearing and welfare practices.
Located in Co Down, the 18,500sq ft house, split into 36 individual pens each holding 500 birds, allows inputs such as feed to be altered, enabling Moy Park to capture and analyse data.
Justin Coleman, Moy Park agriculture development manager, commented: “This poultry development house has been purpose-built to the highest specification, including windows providing natural light, enhanced biosecurity and biomass heating. Chicken is at the very heart of our business and this initiative supports our commitment to sustainability, environmental excellence and developing the farm of the future.
“This investment allows us to lead the way in innovation, providing a precision-controlled environment to better monitor bird welfare, feed conversion and environmental impacts, so we can provide optimum conditions for our chickens.”
The new building is part of a broiler expansion and development programme that is being rolled out across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The programme aims to deliver 250 new houses.
Dunbia has reported it will invest £27 million in new headquarters, creating 209 new jobs over the next three years.
The investment will be used for an “intelligent” boning hall at the company’s headquarters in Dungannon, Northern Ireland.
The new boning hall will upgrade the company’s beef mince and diced burger lines to increase overall productivity levels, said the firm.
It will also be used to upgrade technology so that it is more advanced, which Dunbia said would help maximise the return on its resources and help it remain cost-competitive.
“The new boning hall will help the company achieve economies of scale, while the installation of new production lines, using the most modern automated retail butchery, will increase retail packing efficiencies,” Dunbia said in its announcement.
Dunbia Northern Irish processing operations already employ almost 1,000 people in the procurement, slaughter and de-boning of cattle and sheep, wholesale distribution and retail packing of beef and lamb.
Jim Dobson, managing director of Dunbia Group, said: “Innovation has been at the heart of our success and this investment in new production technology will create a centre of excellence for beef deboning in Ireland.
“It will help us to maintain our position as a leading meat processor in the UK and Ireland and to deliver on our growth strategy over the next three to five years.”
FarmGate Hatcheries is introducing a new breed of turkey “created to help producers meet the growing demand for smaller Christmas turkeys”.
The Super Mini Special produces 4kg hens developed from pure bronze-feathered male and female pedigree lines used in producing the company’s Tiny and Super Mini poult.
Paul Kelly, managing director of FarmGate Hatcheries, Danbury, Essex, said: “The 4kg weights are so hard to get from other smaller breeds grown from June hatches.
“We’ve tried and tested this new breed over the past four years and it’s perfect for guaranteeing the 4kg oven-ready weight band, with the stags giving great 6kg to 8kg oven-ready turkeys.”
Farmgate Hatcheries, part of Kelly Turkeys, announced that limited supplies of poults of the new breed will be available in both bronze and white, both as sexed hens and as hatched, from mid May onwards.
Kelly added: “Our small breeds of bronze turkeys are the genuine article, bred from a bronze mother and a bronze father. [They are] expensive to produce, but bullet-proof when it comes to a probing press and food journalists.
“We’re also very pleased with the meat quality of our small breeds. In our own kitchen we’ve found the Super Mini Special to have a particularly high meat yield, with delicious eating qualities and very fine textured meat.”
Halal specialist KFQ Meats has extended its ‘Exotique’ offering with a new range of spiced quarter-pounder burgers.
The new products, to be launched tomorrow (21 March 2015), on the KFQ website, include, Thai, Moroccan, South African, Portuguese Piri Piri and Mexican flavours.
“The Exotique range is aimed squarely at customers who are looking for convenience foods at the luxury end of the market,” explained KQF managing director Faruk Vali.
“The burgers are considerably larger than usual and they contain 90% lean beef. We’ve developed them for consumers who want something really satisfying for special family occasions, and for professional caterers who want to differentiate themselves on the basis of size, quality and flavour,” Vali said.
The Exotique range was originally designed for the export market and has proved popular in France and other European countries. “European consumers have a preference for milder flavours, so although the Exotique burgers and kebabs are based on authentic Indian recipes, they deliver less chilli heat,” KFQ explained.
The move also integrates with the launch of KQF’s Jumbo range of quarter-pounders. This combines KQF’s existing Texan burgers with a new ‘Great British’ range.
Weighing 110g each, the burgers are available in beef, chicken and lamb.
The Exotique products round out the KFQ burger range, as Vali explained: “With the launch of the Exotique and Jumbo ranges, we can now offer burger-lovers an end-to-end selection, starting with the standard 55g family size Classic. Above that, we have the 80g Chunky burger, the 110g Jumbo and the 220g Exotique at the top end.”
2 Sisters has posted flat sales in its chicken processing business in “the toughest commercial environment” in many years, according to CEO Ranjit Singh.
The company reported like-for-like (LFL) sales of £818.3m, an increase of 1.3%, for its second quarter. However, its protein arm suffered a decline of 2.8% in sales.
Singh said the avian influenza outbreak last year cost the company £6.2m in lost carcases and reduced sales.
Meanwhile, the Food Standards Agency’s campylobacter figures were creating “a negative sentiment”, which Singh said the company was dealing with.
He said in statement: “In our protein business, I take great pride in our continued industry-leading investment in the fight against campylobacter, but the market remains very tough.
“However, we continue to integrate the division, following the Vion acquisition, and we are taking action to deliver efficiency and output improvements across our sites.
2 Sisters’ chilled division looked more positive. Singh added: “A year ago, our chilled division’s profitability was impacted by the aftermath of horsegate. I am pleased to report that, a year on, we are making steady progress, with like-for-like sales up 2.9% and another quarter-on-quarter improvement in operating profit.
“Our branded products continue to operate in aggressive markets and continue to see pressures on sales mix and promotions. Branded achieved a modest operating profit in the quarter and like for like sales were similar to the same period last year. We continue to invest in quality and marketing at Fox’s biscuits.
“This is the toughest commercial environment I can recall for many years, with substantial changes at many of our larger customers. We expect conditions to remain difficult, but are firmly focused on delivering quality.”
Irish meat firm Dawn Meats has been awarded the McDonald’s Europe Sustainable Supply Award 2015 for the second time in a row, for its work on improving sustainability.
McDonald’s said Dawn was at the forefront of promoting sustainable practices within the McDonald’s Europe beef supply chain.
On winning the award, and following on from the success in the global Best of Sustainable Supply awards in 2014, Niall Browne, CEO Dawn Meats, said: “We are delighted and honoured to accept this Sustainable Supply Award on behalf of all the team at Dawn Meats.
“We have worked collaboratively across a range of sustainability challenges, both internal and external, and have delivered tangible benefits for our business, our customers and our suppliers. We look forward to building on this progress in the months and years ahead.
Keith Kenny, head of sustainability & CSR, McDonald’s Europe, commented: “Every year we encourage our suppliers to focus even more attention on sustainability, applying innovation and showing leadership with other stakeholders in making a real difference in the local communities and industries where they operate.
Karro Food Group has confirmed that it is cutting 141 jobs at its Scunthorpe site.
The pork processor had announced that about 150 jobs were at risk at the Billet Lane site at the beginning of the year. Redundancy talks and consultations have since taken place with staff, unions and local government, resulting in the loss of a sizeable proportion of the site’s 362-strong workforce.
The company released the following statement: “Karro Food Group can confirm that the consultation process in relation to potential redundancies has now been completed at our Scunthorpe site. Despite all efforts, it is with regret that 141 colleagues will be leaving the business.
“We have been in close liaison with both USDAW and North Lincolnshire County Council’s Taskforce team and together, we have put a real focus on providing a suite of training options, as well as job search support for those affected. We’ll continue to do all we can to support those leaving the business as they look for new opportunities.”