Cranswick Continental Foods has signed up to an exclusive partnership to work with Spain’s Costa Foods in the UK market.
Part of the Cranswick Group, Cranswick Continental Foods is a leading supplier of continental meats and olives in the UK. In 2018, it moved to a new, £28m purpose built processing site in Bury.
The link up with the Costa Food Group, one of the leading pork producers in Spain, will see it bringing in products from the company to target the £285m UK continental meats market. Spanish charcuterie now account for around one-third of this market.
Costa has grown into a fully vertically integrated producer over the past five decades, now with more than 600 farms and four feed factories and a turnover in excess of €900 million this year.
In 2017, it acquired Casademont, a fourth generation family run Spanish charcuterie producer, and more recently acquired Villar and La Nuncia. These acquisitions enable it to produce authentic Spanish charcuterie with a fully integrated supply chain bringing benefits of both traceability and quality control. Charcuterie now makes up 15% of the total group turnover.
Norman Smith, Sales Director at Cranswick Continental Foods, said: “The UK market is increasingly demanding transparency of continental supply chains and through working with Costa we have a unique proposition that provides a fully integrated solution.
“Combine this with our new site in Bury and we believe we have a market leading farm to fork solution from both a traceability and an efficiency point of view. Costa Food Group, like Cranswick, is a very well invested, forward thinking business that strives to innovate to meet changing consumer needs.
“With our aligned values we are looking forward to introducing the UK consumer to some of the great products Costa produce.”
Josep Buixeda, CEO of Costa Food Group said: “Cranswick is a business that is very much aligned to Costa Group. Together we are committed to delivering the quality standards demanded by the UK market whilst always maintaining service, innovation, transparency and commerciality.”