St. Merryn Food Group
Growth, Success and More...
If you're a regular reader of this newsletter, you will recall the article about St. Merryn Meat in Issue Six (September 1998). Since then much has happened at this highly successful company.
Now, St. Merryn has nine operating sites in the UK, the newest of which is a state-of-the art, £25 million processing facility at Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. This go-ahead group, which employs 1,800 people and produces around 2.2 million retail packs of pork, beef and lamb products every week for the UK's leading supermarkets as well as supplying raw material to the major food service sector, caterers and burger chains, is now one of Europe's biggest and most successful meat processors.
Substantial investment in technology is just one of the reasons for St. Merryn's continuing success. Speed of delivery, high quality and well presented products are only part of the story, for, as we are all so well aware, accurate, fixed weight case ready products - ranging from chops to steaks to joints - are so much in demand these days. If you are going to do all this - and do it profitably - you need fast, reliable and efficient production that provides maximum yields and accurate portions all day long, all year round to serve some of the most efficient and demanding supermarkets in the world. Three AEW THURNE APC Slicers and two SmartSlice 3D fresh meat portioners are helping St. Merryn to keep up with the demand.
When new ideas and opportunities present themselves, that production resource becomes even more important. In partnership with Billfields, a long established London based company with a fine reputation for supplying the very best restaurants in the city, St. Merryn has introduced a new range of catering packs containing beef, pork and lamb steaks.
Top class chefs need well presented, high quality, fixed weight, beef, pork and lamb steaks with no wastage and this, together with an innovative packaging system, is where SmartSlice 3D comes in.
After slicing, the Billfields' steaks are vacuum packed in strips with perforations between each portion to allow the user to tear off one at a time and then placed in an attractively designed box. This vacuum packing technique gives the product extra life.
Next time you enjoy a really fine steak in a top London restaurant, donÕt hesitate to pass your compliments to the chef. And perhaps you'll also spare a thought for the innovative team that helped him - St. Merryn, Billfields and, of course, SmartSlice 3D.
