Dozens of jobs saved as food firm links up with supermarkets

Three weeks after the Covid-19 outbreak swept away 75% of its business, a Yorkshire food manufacturer has saved itself by creating new links with two major supermarkets.

Thirty five jobs were threatened when the British Premium Sausage Company lost three quarters of its business, virtually overnight.

Now the business, based at sites in Bradford and Normanton, near Wakefield, is weathering the lockdown by supplying sausages to more than 220 Asda stores and almost 100 Tesco outlets across the Midlands and Yorkshire.

Managing director Ian Cundell said: “I’m really proud of the initiative we’ve shown and the way the staff and our suppliers have responded.

“It’s testimony to the people we have working for us that we’ve been able to do this and, most importantly, it’s saved jobs and saved the business.”

Prior to the lockdown, the firm made two million sausages a month, plus a million meatballs, burgers and Chorizo sausages.

Most of its products went to hotels and restaurants. It also supplied around two thirds of the UK’s airports.

Cundell said: “When the Prime Minister made the announcement that all the hotels and restaurants should close, that got rid of 50 per cent of our sales. When the airports shut down as well, that accounted for a further 25 per cent.

“I thought we were going to have to furlough at least half of the staff and I didn’t know whether we’d survive as a business. I was quietly panicking.”

The firm retained some sales by continuing to supply care homes and online retailers but it is the new supermarket business which has hugely boosted the fight for survival.

Panic-buying had left the supermarkets crying out for supplies.

Cundell added: “We contacted Asda a week before the lockdown. Usually, being listed by a supermarket takes time but we had supplied them in the past so, within a week, we were accepted by them.

“We are now supplying our Yorkshire Cuisine Premium Pork Sausage and our British Premium Sausage Company Cumberland Sausage.”

It was the same story at Tesco which saw a 30% increase in sales as panic-buying and stockpiling gripped the nation.

“We dropped an email to Dave Lewis, the CEO, saying we had spare capacity. The result is that our Yorkshire Cuisine Premium Sausages can now be found in 93 stores across Yorkshire,” Cundell said.

The company has seen its own retail online sales increase by 400% and sales from other online butchers and meal-kit providers have also helped, as have exports.

It will be years before the full economic cost of the Coronavirus outbreak is known but Cundell said he is optimistic his business may be in as good a shape as many when the country finally emerges from lockdown.

“In some ways, the British Premium Sausage Company may be in a stronger position than before all of this happened,” he said.

“We’ve opened a door into the supermarkets that we wouldn’t have got into before. But, having said that, I think the economic recovery from this nationwide will be very slow.”