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About Us > Solway Foods History
Solway Foods
was built in Corby by three directors, John Bladon, John Bennett and Neil Adnitt. All three
directors had long established careers within
the chilled food industry. In the late 1980’s
they saw a gap in the market, and built a
facility to manufacture salads. At this
time manufacturing was aimed towards
process and shelf life. Solway Foods
established itself on a
philosophy of speed to market with same
day production and with a guarantee of quality. A
year later in 1989, they ventured into sandwich
production.
In 1990
Solway Foods achieved £1 million turnover for the
first time. The first snack salad was developed
and produced in 1991. The year after a second
factory was built to specialise in
sandwiches. |
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By 1994, turnover had increased to £20 million
and Napier Brown Holdings replaced the original
institutional investors. 1995 and 1996 were
extremely busy years with a third factory built
to manufacture bowl and snack salads. Over the
next couple of years, the company invested
heavily in the latest equipment, installing
pasta cooking and chargrilling facilities and
the UK’s first automated sandwich production
line. This left us with three factories on the
Corby site which was, by now, fast running out
of space.
The successful growth and expansion of Solway
Foods continued and in 1999, we opened a factory
in Manton Wood, Worksop to
produce sandwiches and sushi. By now the company
serviced a select group of customers led by
Tesco along with Morrisons and J Sainsbury.
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In February 2000, Northern Foods acquired a 40%
stake in Solway Foods, further enhancing the
company’s access to the very best expertise in
short shelf life chilled foods.
In February 2003 the company opened the second
half of the facility at Manton Wood raising the
capacity at Manton Wood to circa £80m.
The company has achieved this success from
continuing to follow the principles first
adopted in 1988:-
A fundamental
commitment to food safety and quality
through a strong technical function
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Continuous investment to ensure
cost-effective manufacturing and the
availability of capacity
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100% service levels through the most
modern planning and forecasting
systems
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Heavy investment
in NPD to always be first to market
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Continuous
investment in our employees
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In line with the
agreement reached between Napier Brown and
Northern Foods, Northern
acquired a 40% share of Solway Foods, and two years
earlier than anticipated, Solway Foods was fully
acquired by Northern Foods in June 2003. The
acquisition of Solway Foods was in line with Northern
Foods stated strategy of developing the chilled
short life, value added areas of their business.
Solway Foods was an exceptionally good fit with
the business and brought strong
relationships with Tesco, J. Sainsbury and Morrisons.
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