Lidl seals €40m supply deal with O’Brien Fine Foods

Lidl Ireland has announced a two-year supply deal with Kildare-based cooked meats producer, O'Brien Fine Foods worth €40 million.

Lidl has also made a further €50,000 investment in O’Brien Fine Foods which will see its Irish beef produce exported to more than 3,000 Lidl stores in Germany as part of its 2020 Christmas offering.

The €40 million deal will see O’Brien Fine Foods supply Lidl’s 201 stores across the Island of Ireland as well as Lidl’s 797 stores across Britain. It comes as Lidl and O’Brien Fine Foods mark 10 years of supply partnership in Ireland.

Under the new agreement, Lidl will list O’Brien Fine Foods products in a total of 7,438 Lidl stores including those in 14 countries outside of the UK and Ireland.

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These will include Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Spain.

A selected range of products will be available twice yearly in these countries, on a promotional basis.

Lidl Ireland buying executive Brendan Conway said partnerships such as that with O’Brien Fine Foods “leads to greater innovation”.

“An example of such innovation can be seen in the sizeable investment that Lidl have made in O’Brien Fine Foods, which has enabled the company to develop more sustainable packaging, resulting in reduced environmental impact of the range,” he said.

O’Brien Fine Foods is a family-run business based in Timahoe, Co Kildare. It supplies a range of branded and own-label meat products to the Irish market, including the Brady Family, Green Farm and Homebird cooked meat ranges.

Owned by the O’Brien Family since 2000 and operating from three dedicated facilities in counties Kildare, Meath and Westmeath, it produces more than 80 per cent of Lidl’s sliced hams, sliced beef and poultry lines.

The partnership with Lidl over the past ten years has enabled the company to grow its employee base from 250 to 550 employees.

O’Brien Fine Foods managing director John O’Brien said the latest deal would allow the company to invest in its operations.

“Lidl Ireland has been a long-standing partner of ours,” he said. “Over the years, they have helped us to grow our business substantially and more recently, to forge a path into the UK market and fourteen other European countries.

“This commitment by Lidl will allow us to invest in and expand our operations to enable to us to increase our output of high quality ham, beef and poultry products.”