Congratulations to Hall Farm organic pig producers for winning the BQP Waitrose Select Farm Highest Scoring Unit 2010.
How do a group of organic cereal producers end up at an awards dinner for the country's best pig producers? Accept an invite and head off to meet the customers for your grains. A group of Organic Arable producers in the Eastern Counties now supply between 80% - 90% of the cereal requirements of BQPs organic pig producers and so were keen to understand how their businesses are fairing and how this might effect future sales of cereals. Hall Farm is based at Rushbrook Farms one of our members supplying grain into the Waitrose / BQP grain supply initiative. This initiative has localised the supply of feeds by relying less on imported cereals and now sourcing from local farms.
BQP are the sole supplier of pig meat to Waitrose and it was very interesting to hear how Waitrose see their market developing over the next few years and imagine how that might effect the organic grain supply into BQP. The last 18 months have been good for Waitrose who have seen impressive growth in sales but we heard that they see further expansion ahead. They estimate that only 39% of their potential customers have access to a Waitrose store and so have an ambitious store building programme ove the next 5 years in both the supermarket and convenience store sectors. This aligned with various partnerships to put Waitrose products into concessions in other retails' stores should provide continued sales growth.
We are glad to be working within a progressive and dynamic supply chain with BQP and wish Waitrose well in their continued development and expansion of their business. Their success in accessing additional customer will build their organic pork sales and develop the market for our members to supply their pig feed.
Any organic grain producers in the Eastern Counties looking for supply opportunities should leave a comment below and we will contact you to discuss working together
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