West Cork firm set to enjoy just desserts

Alan Kingston describes himself as a simple farmer, but his farm has just signed a deal to supply 138 Tesco stores in Britain with a range of desserts.

Mr Kingston is a co-founder of Glenilen Farm, whose range of yoghurts have managed to crack Britain all the way from Drimoleague, West Cork.

“I think our appeal is down to product, its uniqueness. It ticks all the boxes in the high-end niches: Taste, story, and authenticity. It seems that smaller producers can make more inroads into the UK, it is a long, hard, slow process but there are opportunities,” he said.

Building on the success of its yoghurt range which is already on sale in Waitrose, Tesco, and more than 200 independent stores in Britain, Glenilen Farm is now launching a dessert range in 138 UK Tesco stores from mid-June.

Glenilen exported more than 500,000 pots of yoghurt to the UK last year and is looking at developing a low-fat product.

“There are so many categories in the market now compared to five or six years ago. There’s no fat, 1% fat, low-fat. The opportunities are huge so we like to keep our new product development pipeline full to fuel growth,” he said.

Mr Kingston added: “We will probably create about five or six jobs a year, we don’t want to overreach, but it is a nice business with sustainable growth.”