Fivemiletown Creamery, a Northern Irish speciality cheese producer, has won business from one of Asia’s biggest retail operations. The creameryis to supply a range of soft cheeses, including its unique Boilie Irish goats’ cheese, and creamy cheddars to Dairy Farm International Holdings, headquartered in Hong Kong. Dairy Farm operates major supermarkets in Hong Kong, including the Wellcome chain, the region’s biggest retailer, as well as in Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Wellcome has more than 240 stores and serves more than 14 million customers every month in Hong Kong. Dairy Farm and its associates operate some 5,250 outlets, employs over 81,000 people and had total annual sales in 2010 exceeding US$9 billion (EUR6.8bn).

Owen Jones, Fivemiletown Creamery’s business development manager, describes the contract, secured through a leading distributor, as “a huge boost for the creamery in one of the most dynamic international markets. We have been supplying oak smoked cheddar sticks to another retail operation there for several years and have been working to develop contacts to strengthen business there especially for our soft bries and Boilie cheeses. As a result of our developing focus on exports, we are now selling our soft cheeses in 15 global markets including Hong Kong.”