Vive La France!: Swift Fine Foods

It's the year of the French, for Martin Ormonde, sales manager with Swift Fine Foods, a Monaghan-based producer of chilled and frozen ready meals.

The company, which employs 95 people and has a number of brands, including Chef’s Made and Chef’s Cuisine, is participating in Access 6, an EU-funded export development programme that aims to boost Irish food and drink exports to the €312 billion French retail grocery and foodservice market.

“We only recently began exporting to the UK and already it accounts for around 5 per cent of turnover, so the sheer size and proximity of the French market makes it worthwhile for us to try and develop that too,” says Ormonde.

The Access 6 programme, which is delivered by the Irish Exporters Association (IEA), aims to provide Irish SMEs with training and mentorship to successfully supply and trade in a number of foreign markets including the UK, France, Germany, Scandinavia, North America and Benelux.

Of those, France remains the leading continental European market for Irish food and drink exports, and Ireland’s most important eurozone trading partner in the sector, with total 2013 food and drink exports estimated at €673 million.

The double-digit growth achieved in 2013 included not only areas of traditional strength for Irish exporters, such as lamb and beverages, but also significant new business in categories such as mushrooms, snails, bakery, farmhouse cheese and soft drinks.

“As part of the programme we will meet with French buyers to find gaps in the market there that we might be able to fill,” says Ormonde.