‘Aldi’s Next Big Thing’ health and deli category winner, The Greek Farmer has seen a boost in production capacity following its success on the show.
After battling its competitors through several rounds on the series, the charcuterie brand landed a contract with Aldi to supply over 15,000 packs of its cured meat across the discount grocers UK stores.
Faced with a surge in orders, The Greek Farmer has since turned to the Manufacturing Growth Programme (MGP) for grants to help it part-fund new packing machiney and a meat preperation area to meet Aldi’s lead times.
As a result of the increase in orders, several new jobs have also been created.
The Greek Farmer director, Tony Charalambides said “the hard work really started when we had to consider how we would go about slicing and packing 15,000 packs of cured meat to supply Aldi.”
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He said the “only way this would be feasible” was via investing in new machinery, adding “the MGP support was a huge relief both for scalability and cashflow.
“It meant we could scale in the short space of time we had by investing in the machinery we needed. This, in turn, ensured we were in Aldi stores on time.”
Manufacturing growth manager, Amanda Freeland added: “It is amazing that this small company, which only began fully trading in December 2021, was able to make such a hit with the managing director of buying at Aldi.
“This was all down to the quality and consistency of its smoked cured meat products, and the family business will now gain recognition for this by being stocked in every Aldi store across the UK.
“It’s an incredible achievement, a great success story. I am genuinely delighted that MGP has been able to help it gear up to meet the growth challenge by supporting it with a grant for faster manufacturing equipment.”
