Top award for Yorkshire packer

An innovative marketing idea where consumers can trace locally-produced eggs back to the farm of origin has earned a top industry award for Chippindale Foods.

The family-run packing operation launched its Yorkshire Free Range Eggs brand back in 2005 and was the first packer to create a website—wheresyoursfrom.com—where consumers could trace the origin of their eggs. By simply entering the producer code stamped on the egg it is possible to read details about the individual farm—and farmer—where the eggs have been laid. It is an idea that has since caught on with other packers.

This development and the continued growth of the company—including the launch of locally-produced organic eggs under the 'brontëbrowns' label—so impressed the judges of this year's British Egg Awards that Chippindale Foods was named Small Enterprise of the Year.

But the company hasn't always been expert at marketing eggs, although it did have to learn pretty quickly back in the early nineties when a ranch packing arrangement with Stonegate came to an abrupt end.

"We were left with a lot of egg to find a home for but had no marketing experience," explains Nick Chippindale, now managing director and the third generation of his family to be involved in the business.

The company was left selling most of its eggs—which were mainly cage-produced—on the wholesale market whilst it attempted to develop a retail customer base. The first big break came in 1999 when Chippindale Foods picked up an order to supply a handful of Morrisons' stores. That was a major turning point for the company and sales steadily increased from then on as it added not only more Morrisons stores to its list of customers but also Northwest-based supermarket chain Booths and food wholesaler Brakes.

With the packing centre, which is still based at Kingsley Farm, Harrogate, where the Chippindale family first started keeping poultry in back in 1930, struggling to keep up with the growing throughput, last autumn saw the premises expanded and a new grader installed in a £500,000 investment programme.

It was a move which, according to Nick Chippindale, put the company in a position where it could compete with larger players in the industry. And compete it has done, for the company has capitalised on the turmoil that surrounded supplies of eggs—particularly free range—into supermarkets late last year and has recently doubled its Morrisons business.

That has meant expanding the production base and the company is presently recruiting producers to join its already15-strong team of free range and organic suppliers, whilst the Chippindales' own farm feeds the packing operation with much of its cage and barn egg requirements.

"These are very exciting times for the company," says Nick Chippindale, "and we were thrilled to be selected as one of the winners in this year's British Egg Awards."

And it's perhaps as well Chippindale Foods was crowned Small Enterprise of the Year in 2007, for judging by its current rate of growth it will not qualify for entry next year.

For more free range news visit www.theranger.co.uk