Lakeland Dairies has been supplying Tesco for three years and, including the new ice cream range, up to €1m worth of sales is forecast over the next year for Lakeland Dairies in Tesco stores across ice cream, milk and butter products.

Commenting on the announcement, John Brennan of Tesco Ireland said Lakeland will also be joining the export level of this year’s Tesco Bord Bia Supplier development programme that will be launching soon, opening the door for Lakeland Dairies to start discussing opportunities in Tesco UK.

Ice-cream

The new range includes ice-cream flavours such as Salted Caramel, Madagascan Vanilla, Cookie Dough, Rockie Road and frozen yoghurt flavours such as Strawberry Crumble and Mango & Passionfruit.

Both the frozen yoghurt flavours carry the claims that they are low in fat, contain a source of fibre (source of fibre is from added inulin) and they contain 30% less energy than standard vanilla ice cream (less than 211 calories/100g).

Dermot Farrell, General Manager for Lakeland Dairies commented, “Developing mutually beneficial business relationships is the key to successfully enabling category growth. We are delighted to be working with Tesco and I am confident that the forthcoming Bord Bia development programme will result in long term growth opportunities.”

Lakeland Dairies

Lakeland Dairies is a farmer owned dairy processing co-operative based in Killeshandra in Cavan which employs over 600 people directly. It also sources milk from over 2,200 dairy farmers.

The company processes over 800 million litres of milk into a wide-range of value-added products and ingredients which it exports to over 70 countries. Following the end of quotas, annual milk supply to Lakeland Dairies is expected to increase by some 40% to over one billion litres by 2020.