Food group’s €5m a year Tesco deal

MEATH-BASED Largo Foods has won a €5 million a year deal to supply supermarket giant Tesco with a range of snack foods.

The contract will see Largo, which is best known for making Perri crisps, supply Tesco with premium range own brand snack foods.

Largo said yesterday it will increase its workforce as a result of the deal by nearly 30 people. The company, which was founded in 1983, already employs 450 people. The new jobs will be created in its dedicated snack production facility in Gweedore, Donegal, where the Tesco Select own brand snacks range will be produced.

Largo managing director Raymond Coyle said the contract was significant for the firm.

“I have no doubt that our knowledge of the standards expected and required by Tesco for its own brand label, gained through our work with Tesco Ireland to date, has helped to secure this sizeable contract.

"We hope that the awarding of this contract will help to solidify and expand our relationship with one of our company’s most important customers in the coming years.”

Largo Foods already supplies Tesco with its own branded crisps and snacks such as Hunky Dorys and Perri Crisps and Tesco own label snack products to its Irish stores. In addition the company also supplies all own label snack produce to Tesco in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The company’s Tesco contract will see the production of 56 million packets annually under the Tesco Select o brand label including cheese, pickled onion and bacon flavoured snacks for distribution throughout Tesco stores in Britain.

Largo is based in Ashbourne, Co Meath, and has four manufacturing sites in Europe; Meath, Donegal, the Czech Republic and Moldova, from which 45% of output is exported throughout the EU and Eastern Europe.

The jobs will be a boost for the Gweedore area, which has traditionally been an unemployment black spot.