A COUNTY Armagh food firm reinvests £20 million in the north's economy a year - 50 years after it was first set up.
Avondale Foods in Lurgan was established by Harry and Derek Geddis, who began growing and selling vegetables from the family farm.
The company now supplies own brand potato salad and coleslaw to all Waitrose and Marks & Spencer stores across the UK, as well as coleslaws and vegetable accompaniments through Dunnes, Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Morrisons and other retail outlets under ‘own brand’ and the company’s Country Kitchen brand.
This family business also employs more than 380 people.
Derek Geddis said: “We started out in 1965, growing vegetables for sale in markets and shop. Marks & Spencer was one of our first retail customers when we started supplying vegetables to the Belfast store in 1968. It was a very different time – the produce market and the green-grocer were at the heart of the shopping experience then. As the pace of life began to change, supermarkets grew in popularity and we made a simple diversification into pre-packed vegetables to make them more convenient to buy.
“As the business grew, we outsourced our produce, using our own experience in horticulture to ensure that growers supplied us with high quality produce. We began to look at ways we could add value to our products and so coleslaw was our first major product development. Things really started to grow from there.”
During the 1980s the company’s main business was within pre-packed vegetables, salads and coleslaw, but with the growth of the new product development team, the firm began to supply sauces and mayonnaise in both wholesale and retail formats.
In 1992 Avondale bought the Country Kitchen brand which is now sold across Northern Ireland with a market-leading range of salads and traditional hearty soups.
The company’s core business in 2015 is the production and development of own brand products for many of the UK’s biggest retailers, recently diversifying into garlic doughballs, which are manufactured in the company’s on-site bakery.
