Frozen delights to tempt the adult palate

TO coldly go where no ice cream company has gone before and to develop new and different frozen deserts is the mission of Fermoy-based company Silver Pail Dairy.

It's already on the right track with the creation of Crème Parfait a liqueur flavoured frozen dessert which won the best food and beverage product award at the Catex catering exhibition earlier this year.

Designed for the hotel and restaurant market, this is available in four flavours chocolate orange liqueur, crème de menthe, Irish cream liqueur and tiramisu and contains 5% alcohol.

Silver Pail has patented a technology which allows it to blend and freeze cream and alcohol.

According to company managing director Michael Murphy it's the only company in the world to have developed a frozen dessert with 5% alcohol.

Silver Pail has been in existence since 1978 and is Ireland's largest privately owned ice cream company with an 80,000 sq ft plant and a production capacity of 40 million litres of ice cream a year.

Initially it produced soft whip ice cream for cone machines but started producing tubs during the 1980s around the time ice cream was reinvented as a luxury product

The company produces around 100 flavours of ice cream, and business is divided fairly evenly between the retail market and the food service industry.

Silver Pail brand ice cream is sold in most of the Irish multiples and the company makes own brand varieties for Tesco, Dunnes, Supervalu and Superquin.

The British market accounts for 50% of turnover. The majority of sales there are to the catering industry but it makes own label ice cream for Tesco and Morrisons and has a contract to supply Thorntons chocolate company.

Silver Pail also makes Carolans Irish crème liqueur and Darina Allen ice cream under contract.

The company launched a major expansion programme five years ago, building a 30,000 sq ft extension and adding another two years later. Eighteen months ago Silver Pail decided to rationalise.

"We were making a lot of small volume products so it made sense to cut back. We decided to concentrate on the main lines which had volume sales," said Silver Pail sales manager Thea Murphy. Now the company is expanding again concentrating on the premium quality speciality dessert area for which high growth has been forecast.

In the region of 120,000 million worth of ice cream is eaten in Ireland in a year and the market has grown by 30% over the last five years. There's huge competition on the supermarket shelves, but according to Ms Murphy there is always a demand for different products.

"Ice cream has been moving up-market in recent years and has become a lot more sophisticated," she observes.

For the short term, the focus at Silver Pail is on expanding sales to the food service industry in Ireland and Britain. Part of the reason for this is that in the past the company hasn't developed this market to its full potential and also because it's easier to sell a new product to hotels and restaurants.

"There's limited space on supermarket shelves products need to be proved and the catering market is a good way to prove a product," says Ms Murphy.

In recent years Silver Pail sales to the catering industry have grown by around 10% per annum while sales to the retail market have been growing by 5-6%.

"We have a lot of plans for the future and will be launching some new products before the end of the year," says Ms Murphy, adding that Crème Parfait has been selling well and is to be launched in Britain in the next few months and in France and Germany later in the year.

The company will consider launching it on the retail market at a later stage.

While economic downturn may be hurting sales for some companies, Ms Murphy says it's not having any impact on the ice cream business.

" Ice cream is a treat product if people can't afford to go on a holiday they will treat themselves to some ice cream."