Category: PR

#AldiPloughing

The Aldi Marquee is set to steal the show at this year’s National Ploughing Championships at Ratheniska, Co Laois next week. The stunning exterior clad in a ‘living wall’ of herbs and flowers sets the tone for a beautifully designed space showcasing Aldi’s suppliers and the very best of Irish produce, with a few special guests too. Two large venues within the Aldi Marquee will feature entertainment by the D’Unbelievable’s hilarious Jon Kenny, Gaeltacht superstars Seo Linn, and the legendary Sharon Shannon, all with guest MC Síle Seoige.

The National Brown Bread Baking Competition will be hosted in the Aldi Marquee. Hotly contested, the huge number of entrants nationwide has now been whittled down to just 8, who will compete on Tuesday and Wednesday for a place in Thursday’s final. Representing their county and with the title of Ireland’s Best Brown Bread Baker up for grabs, this prestigious competition, sponsored by Aldi and in association with the National Ploughing Association and the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, is firmly back on the annual calendar and is sure to draw a crowd.

Visitors to the Aldi Marquee are in for a treat. Aldi has recreated a traditional Irish street, with a bakery, a fishmonger, a delicatessen, a butcher and more, each showcasing Aldi’s multi award-winning products proudly presented by the producers themselves. It’s an opportunity to ‘meet the makers’ of Aldi’s Irish products, hear the story behind them, and try them too.

At the top of the street, the bandstand area will be buzzing, with a traditional Ice Cream Van, a Coffee House and an open fronted kitchen, busy serving up samples of Aldi’s delicious hot food, from sausages in the morning, through to lunch time snacks and tea time treats. In the afternoon the bandstand itself will host a very special live performance with Seo Linn on Tuesday and Sharon Shannon on Wednesday.

An event as special as deciding Ireland’s best brown bread deserves its own venue, so just off the street there’s a separate area, specially created to host the live baking competition. It’s here, in the mornings, that you’ll find the comedic favourite, Jon Kenny, who has created a cast of characters especially for the event. Each morning, come along on the hour to delight in the live caricatures of a farmer, a hunter, a jockey and a hurler!

Technology is having a huge impact on all our lives, including animals and Miriam the cow is bringing her thoughts on the wonders of technology from a cow’s perspective to the Ploughing.

Over the past few weeks Miriam @MiriamTheCow has been busy tweeting about life on the farm. She’s seen how much technology is having a huge impact on the business of farming and digital and social media is revolutionizing how the farmer is staying informed with up-to-date news and events.

In a first, for this year’s National Ploughing Championship, @MiriamTheCow will be tweeting live to give us a perspective of how she and her friends view the three-day event.

With smartphone ownership growing and new technologies allowing farmers control their enterprises from the touch of a button, the business of farming is changing rapidly.

@MiriamTheCow – one of the Lely cows has been tweeting for the last few weeks and already has amassed in excess of 200 followers.

Named after Miriam O’Callaghan, (because the farmer felt if she looked as good after nine calves as Miriam looks after nine children she wouldn’t be doing so bad!) she has been keeping us up to date with what happens on an Irish farm and introduced us to Betsy, Daisy,

Buttercup and some of the other girls that she lives with on the farm.

The patented device which is called the Safehitch has been developed to address the frustrating issue of safely and quickly attaching an implement to a tractor on the lower 3 point linkage.

The inspiration for the innovation has come from a growing realisation that tractors and implements are getting bigger, farmers older and children are being exposed to greater forces than in days gone by . As one of their boys pointed out” In the 21 st century there must an easier way to do this “

The pre set nature of the safehitch allows the user to align the lower arms to any device prior to mounting the tractor and allows one person to easily initiate attachment of an implement unaided without dismounting from the vehicle.

While it is a labour saving device, they view it primarily as a safety feature in that they find that many older farmers are physically uncomfortable mounting and dismounting in order to set the lower arms, many farmers tend to resort to dragging implements into place opening up the risk of physical injury, while in many cases a second person often a child is called on to push the arms into place exposing themselves to the risk of being crushed when the tractor moves back.

In light of the number of injuries and fatalities in recent times on farms we feel Safehitch has an important role to play in limiting risk in this crucial area.

Please circulate this press release for me in the run up to Ploughing, I will have images and a short video in the next day or so and will send these on also. anything you can do will be much appreciated.

www.gethitched.ie

Stands

We will have 2 stands at this years’ NPA event:

1. An Indoor stall at the Exhibitors Marquee (stall number TBC)

• People will meet our sales and marketing team at the Exhibitor Stall and can hear all about the story behind Meade Potato Company – Ireland’s quality fresh and frozen produce provider – and our exciting new product, Meade Irish Rooster Chips.
• We will be running competitions, giving away coupons for our new chips, providing details of upcoming special offers, as well as tokens to try our chips for free at our Chip Bar outside!

2. Our Chip Bar will be located outside (exact location TBC).

• Here people can purchase our tasty chips throughout the day and see our colourful and branded Irish Rooster Chip Bar!
• We will also be giving away coupons to buy our frozen chips in the supermarkets.

The Story

Currently Ireland imports 120,000 tonnes of foreign frozen potato products each year, despite being a nation of great potato producers and connoisseurs!  More interestingly, to produce that 120,000 tonnes of imported frozen potato products requires approx. 240,000 tonnes of fresh potatoes to make – this represents the entire Irish potato crop output per year!  Yet our Irish potato growers suffer year after year when yields are high but there are no markets for their potatoes – our fresh potatoes end up being exported because there is no market here, and on the other hand we’re importing 22 articulated lorries full of frozen potato products each week!   We at Meade Potato Company want to change this.  We want to make a dent in the imports of the multinationals (Green Isle and McCain) and bring stability to the Irish potato industry.

The Company

For over 30 years Meade Potato Company has been growing, packing and bringing top quality potatoes, as well as fruit, vegetables and organic produce, to retailers nationwide from our family farm in Lobinstown, Co Meath.  Now we are putting our passion for potatoes and our knowledge of the humble spud to good use with the production of Meade Irish Rooster Chips.

The Product

We want to give Irish consumers the choice of purchasing an Irish home grown chip when they are shopping in the frozen aisle of their local supermarket.  And what a great product we have produced – Meade Irish Rooster Chips are made exclusively from Ireland’s favourite potato variety – the Rooster, sunflower oil and nothing else; they are naturally gluten free as well so it’s as healthy a chip as can be had.

Feedback

Customers love our chips – the first frozen chip that actually tastes like a potato, and it’s Irish to boot!  They love the fluffiness, the golden colour and the real rooster potato taste. But people are equally amazed by our story – the fact that until now there has been no Irish frozen chips in Ireland, and the fact that we import all our frozen potato products when we are a nation of people who are particular about their spuds and have the growing capability to produce our own frozen potato products!

Business contacts:

Caitriona Dillon, Product Marketing Manager, Meade Irish Rooster Chips – 087 738 5259

Jeni Meade, Senior PR Officer – 086 346 6840