Steady expansion has been the game plan of the Flagship Foods Group. It consists of Roach Foods, its bacon and cooked meat business, pigmeat processor Dalehead Foods and British Quality Pigs, and its latest buy, foodservice company Wicketts acquired from Brake Bros. All its businesses are independent of each other and have given Flagship a turnover of £400m. Now that British Quality Pigs has become a division of Dalehead, the group claims to be the largest corporate farmer in the country. This year Flagship has invested £17m in logistics, IT, staff and supply chain management and next year it promises it will be more. In addition it has spent £45m on a new cooked meat plant and it has just refurbished and expanded Dalehead's 25,000 sq m plant with butchery processing and packaging equipment at Ashton-under-Lyne. This will improve quality control and put through 350t of pigmeat from that plant a week. Roach says regional products and promotions are big business and its West Country branding has been successful. Organic is a niche market with a high added value and Dalehead produces British pork, free range and organic. {{FOCUS SPECIALS }}

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