Finest Devon and Cornwall Producer Group

Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A successful round of meetings were recently held with producers who have supplied St Merryn with lambs for the Tesco Finest Devon and Cornwall lamb range.

The most recent meeting was held in Cornwall with 24 loyal St Merryn lamb producers in attendance. St Merryn were very fortunate to welcome Tesco’s Agricultural Manager, Alice Pattinson, to the meeting held at The Jamaica Inn. Alice gave an overview of Finest Lamb sales figures for the past 12 months, and explained that Finest Lamb was growing in popularity despite economic concerns amongst consumers. Finest Lamb is now available in 300 stores nationwide, this figure has doubled over the past two years.

“It is evident that consumers recognise the provenance and added sweetness and quality of the Tesco Finest lamb range.” Alice explained. “We are pleased to be working with such loyal and committed producers, especially here in the Devon and Cornwall” Alice added.

John Dracup, St Merryn Livestock Director, gave an overview of the concept of the Tesco Finest Lamb initiative, which aims to supply the sweetest and youngest lamb available at any given time of the year. “This means sourcing lambs initially from Devon and Cornwall during the early part of the year, before moving up like a tide to other regions of the UK to source lambs of the very finest quality” John Dracup explained.

During the evening, producers were given the opportunity to voice their opinions, concerns and benefits of supplying lambs to St Merryn for the Tesco Finest range. A number of issues were discussed with the aim of moving forward to develop and secure a larger supply, better return and greater brand awareness of the Tesco Finest lamb range during 2009.