30th July 2009
Cornish Pasty Sales Fuelling Record Year For Crantock Bakery.
Above: Nick Ringer, Chairman and Managing Director of Crantock Bakery. Photo: Crantock Bakery.
RECORD SALES of Cornish pasties are fuelling a recession-busting year for award-winning food producer Crantock Bakery.
The Indian Queens company has seen its annual turnover jump to over £15 million - an increase of 30% on last year - as Britain’s appetite for the pasty reaches new heights.
“There’s a lot of talk of looking for the ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery, but we’re having our best year ever. We’ve never been busier,” said Crantock Bakery’s chairman and managing director Nick Ringer.
“The Cornish pasty is a feel-good food - it’s warm, filling, and unlike lots of food that’s eaten on the move is quite healthy as it contains lots of fresh ingredients and vegetables. Plus at a typical price of a little over £2, a pasty certainly doesn’t hurt the wallet.”
While Crantock Bakery are enjoying a great year despite the country’s wider economic woes, the recent trend is far from unusual. The company’s turnover has more than quadrupled since the business was bought by the management team in 2002 for £6 million.
Over the same period the company has taken on over 70 new full time employees, swelling the current staff numbers to 150.
Not content to rest on their laurels, the company has implemented an ambitious growth plan which sees the bakery expanding into new markets as well as building on their historic core business of supplying Cornish pasties and other products for in-store baking by independent pasty shops and bakeries.
A £2 million investment in production machinery and freezer storage was completed in 2007, giving the bakery the capacity to produce up to 150,000 pasties a day, all hand-crimped in the traditional way, while their £100,000 computerised sausage roll machine can produce just under one mile of sausage rolls every hour.
Today Crantock Bakery’s products can be found nationwide in supermarkets Morrison’s and Asda, as well as in pasty retailers Proper Pasty, Cornish Bakehouse, Cornish Kitchen and the Oggy Oggy Pasty Company.
According to Nick Ringer, the key to Crantock’s success has been concentrating on continually improving the quality of their products, backed up with an emphasis on outstanding customer service - both factors which saw the bakery scoop the prestigious Bakery Food Manufacturer of the Year prize at the 2008 British Industry Awards.
“You can’t stand still,” says Nick Ringer. “You have to develop new products, new ways of selling and explore new markets. In the last year we have created a new position for a new product development manager whose sole focus is to create new lines and refine our existing product range.”
Crantock’s top-selling product remains their traditional steak pasty, but testament to their innovative product development programme is the fact that the next best seller is a spicy chicken pasty.
The company is also the only manufacturer of Cornish pasties to make halal pasties - their halal spicy chicken and spicy lamb pasties have been accredited by the UK Halal Corporation.
Key points
— 2009 is best year ever for Crantock Bakery
— Turnover up 30% this year.
— 19 million pasties produced in past 12 months
— Turnover has quadrupled in 6 years.
— Over 90% of Crantock Bakery’s products are sold outside Cornwall.
— Objective One estimates that pasties were worth £150 million a year to the local Cornish economy.
Crantock Bakery’s 5 top-selling products
— Traditional steak pasty
— Spicy chicken pasty
— Sausage roll
— Beef & Stilton pasty
— Cheese pasty
ENDS
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Notes to Editors
Crantock Bakery is an award-winning manufacturer of Cornish pasties and bake-off products. Founded in 1981, the company employs over 150 people at their purpose-built bakery near Newquay in Cornwall. Following a multi-million programme of investment the 27,000 sq ft premises last year produced over 19 million pasties - all hand-crimped in the traditional Cornish way.
The continually-expanding product range includes sausage rolls, hand-raised pies, scones and 30 different pasties. The company is highly adept at developing bespoke products for their customers, who range from independent bakers to foodservice suppliers and supermarkets throughout the UK and Europe.
Crantock Bakery is the 2008 British Bakery Manufacturer of the Year.
Media Contact - PR on behalf of Crantock Bakery.
Jim Michell at Barefoot Media.
Telephone: +44 (0)1208 895089
Email: jim@barefootmedia.co.uk |
