Athlone's Oliver Carty & Family wins big at Great Taste food awards
Athlone company Oliver Carty & Family is celebrating after an unprecedented seven of its pork and bacon products were awarded star status at the prestigious Great Taste food awards.
The awards for the local firm included a coveted three stars for its Honey and Brown Sugar Slow Cooked Ham on the Bone.
Three-star awards are bestowed on products deemed "extraordinarily tasty" and the Oliver Carty & Family Honey and Brown Sugar Slow Cooked Ham on the Bone was one of just 17 products in Ireland to achieve this accolade.
Oliver Carty & Family, which is run by Ted Carty, is a specialist Pork & Bacon processing company based in Monksland. It employs over 150 people, and produces a range of more than 200 different products.
The Great Taste Awards is an international competition widely recognised as a stamp of excellence in food quality.
It takes place over 90 days, in both Dorset and London, and is judged by a rotating panel of industry experts. The results were declared on Tuesday last, August 1.
In addition to its three-star award, Oliver Carty & Family said it was thrilled that six of its other products were recognised for their excellence.
These were its Spiced Brown Sugar Rubbed Smoked Rack of Bacon (Two Stars); Organic Roasting Bacon Joint with Organic Honey Drizzle (Two Stars); Smoked Back Rasher (One Star); Pork Belly Slab with Infused Atlantic Sea Salt (One Star); Organic Honey Infused Smoked Streaky Bacon (One Star) and Irish Hampshire Pork Tomahawk with Truffle Butter (One Star).
Oliver Carty & Family CEO, Ted Carty, said the three-star Great Taste award the company had received was "the highest gastronomic honour".
"This is the ultimate accolade in the UK and Ireland's most prestigious food awards, run by the Guild of Fine Foods, so it is an extremely big deal and we are thrilled that all our hard work to produce the best tasting ham has been recognised," he said.
The Oliver Carty business was established in the 1950s in a cooking facility at the back of the family home in Arcadia, Athlone. In 1970, a small unit was built in Athlone. After three decades of continuous growth and expansion, a five-acre site was purchased in 2003 to build a state-of-the-art facility for boning, curing, smoking, and consumer pack jointing.
In 2008, a further extension was added doubling original floor space and bringing total capacity of Oliver Carty to 90,000 square feet. The business is now owned and run by Oliver’s son Ted, and is one of Ireland largest pork and bacon producers.