An East Yorkshire modular buildings specialist has helped an innovative goat meat supplier carve out new markets after sales were hit by Covid.
Fisher UK has designed, built and installed a bespoke butchery unit for Cabrito, enabling it to vastly expand online retail sales. The company was turned to by the multi award-winning Gloucestershire firm after hearing of success in game and food processing.
Cabrito was created by James Whetlor and his partner Sushila in 2012, who sought a solution after learning of the plight of male kid goats in the dairy industry, where they were routinely euthanised. The entrepreneurial duo worked with a local farmer, selling them into top London restaurants, having been appalled by the waste. But when the pandemic forced restaurants to close, the couple had to immediately re-examine their business model.
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James, who is also the author of internationally acclaimed cookery book, Goat: Cooking and Eating, said lockdown measures had all but made their business obsolete. “Our customers were restaurants,” he said. “The pandemic meant we had to reshape the retail side of the business, expand our online sales and sell directly to the consumer. But selling direct to consumer requires a more complex butchery process than selling to the trade, and that put pressure on our outsourced supply, so we needed another solution.”
James contacted Fisher UK, based at Beeford between Hornsea and Driffield, after researching. The two companies quickly set about designing a solution that would enable Cabrito to bring carcase processing in-house to better serve online retail customers, with crowdfunding raising more than £250,000 in under a month. A commitment to producing ethical, sustainable meat struck a chord with investors. This enabled Fisher UK to design, build, deliver, install and commission the site all in under six months.
Jonathan Fisher, managing director of the 15 year old firm, described the unit as a “plug in and play Food Standards Agency cutting plant”.
“We created a pre-fabricated, fully functional food processing site that can be purchased like a piece of machinery,” he said. “The capacity can easily be extended by adding two or three more modules as the business grows.
“It is a far more cost effective, flexible, and less disruptive solution than building something on site or having to move to a bigger premises, both of which would have had significant impacts on Cabrito’s production. Our solution ensured there was no disruption to that at all.”
James said the butchery facility has enabled the business to grow online sales as well as open up conversations with food manufacturers supplying large multiple retailers, with security of supply ensured. He added working with Fisher UK had saved them a lot of headaches when it came to finding the right solution. “From start to finish, the whole process has been very convenient,” he said. “Being constructed off site kept disruption to a minimum and all of its components are FSA approved which gives us a platform to supply a Safe and Local Supplier Approval-certified product.
“The installation team were clean and efficient, meaning the units were installed with minimal fuss and disruption. We have already employed two full time butchers in the business since receiving the building and we have the capacity to more than double this as the business grows.”
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