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Pork Farms pumps half a million into gluten-free

26-Jun-2014 - Last updated on 27-Jun-2014 at 11:36 GMT

Pork Farms's new gluten-free pastry brand

Related tags New product development Gluten-free diet

Pork Farms has pumped half a million pounds into a new gluten-free (GF) bakery brand that is being manufactured at its chilled quiche Riverside Bakery in Nottingham.

The brand, named Too Good To Be Gluten Free (NO G), was launched in March this year and is claimed to be the UK’s first chilled GF savoury pastry range.

A £250,000 deal to supply the supermarket chain Sainsbury with its GF products was also recently secured, Sam Benjamin, NO G brand manager told FoodManufacture.co.uk.

From next month, NO G will also be stocked by Ocado, before entering 100 Sainsbury stores in September, said Benjamin.

‘Grow the brand massively’

“It’s our plan to go into all of the major multiples and grow the brand massively in the coming years,” he added.

In 12 months’ time, the brand is expected to be worth £5M and to double in size to £10M in the next two to three years, claimed Benjamin.

NO G’s overall sales contribution to the Riverside Bakery is as yet unknown; but, Benjamin hoped the brand would attain 10% of total business sales within its first year.

The GF products, which include a slow cooked beef and mushroom pie, butternut, spinach and emmental pie and a chorizo-topped frittata, as well as others, are made in a segregated area of the Riverside Bakery to reduce the contamination risk, he added.

Segregated area

More than 30 of the site’s current 350 staff are working on the new line, but no new jobs had been created, said Benjamin.

The GF bakery has the capacity to produce 150,000 products a day, but it is currently producing about 1,000 a day until demand rises, he added.

Meanwhile, significant growth in the GF sector had also led NO G to invest in new product development. As a result, a selection of party-themed GF mini-quiches will be launched in the summer and mini-pies at Christmas time, he said.

“Mini GF products for parties are a gap in the market that we’ve spotted,” he said. “There’s not a lot GF people can eat at parties, so we’re going in with these products.”

The GF sector has grown by 64% in the last couple of years and is expected to increase again within the next few years to £561M by 2017, which was positive for the new brand, added Benjamin.

Gluten-free in figures