Ed Bedington
An ambitious meat supplier is hoping to create a West Country meat brand to rival Scotch beef or Welsh lamb.
Turton Quality Foods aims to raise the profile of the region's meat offering by working closely with farmers to create top quality products.
The concept has been launched as Meat from Steve Turton' and supplies high quality catering establishments such as Smiths of Smithfields.
And Steve Turton, managing director, is keen to attract the multiples: "That is the end aim. We already have good relationships with them all through supplying them with Westaway sausages and we are already getting some interest on this."
The organisation is working with 36 farmers and the official launch will be in October.
Turton said: "There's a lot of talk about product integrity but not a lot of action. We wanted to create something that was of consistent good quality.
"Farmers talk about wanting a premium, the only way they are going to get that is to produce a premium product."
He said the company was able to provide a superiour product by providing information to the farmers about the end market. "We can see what the consumer wants and feed that back to the farmers."
The company hopes the scheme will grow and provide a basis for a West Country brand for beef, lamb and pork to compete with imports and home grown competitors such as Scotch beef.
Turton added: "Appealing to top chefs will help raise the profile of the region."

{{MARKET EDGE }}

Topics