Santa Maria gears up for boom in Mexican food

Santa Maria – which sells to consumers under its Discovery food brand – has invested £500,000 in new technology at its Milton Keynes plant to make preservative-free Mexican tortillas for retailers, said Bev Taylor, the company’s regional marketing manager.

Santa Maria also sells to processors and foodservice companies and is adopting a new approach to doing business. Instead of selling individual ingredients, it has started to sell ‘concepts’ – which include recipes and ingredients as a package where manufacturers merely have to add the protein, said Taylor.

Santa Maria has already witnessed interest from ready meal manufacturers, she added.

Do the Mexican 3-Step...​

This has spurred the company into introducing two new concepts to be launched this summer including the ‘Mexican 3-Step’ – which prepares multiple dishes from a small number of base ingredients.

Last year Mexican food grew 8.5% year-on-year in the UK to £139.2M and Discovery’s share of the market grew 30%, said Taylor.

Santa Maria has set plans to double its market share and overtake General Mill’s leading Old El Paso brand during the next few years, she added.

Growth in the Mexican sector has brought new companies into UK from the US, but Taylor said the market was big enough to accommodate all, provided economic recovery continued to give consumers the confidence to try new things.