West Country shoppers are giving the thumbs up to locally-produced food in their local supermarkets, and are often choosing local products instead of more established brands.

Tesco now has nearly 100 local producers in the West Country, with many stores stocking up to 300 local lines, including fresh meat, bacon, sausages, fish, milk, eggs, beer and cider, water and other produce.

All meat counters in West Country stores are now stocked with local produce and they are performing better than those in any other region.

The region’s fish counters now stock up to six local fish lines and six local pre-packed fish lines are being introduced this week; there are two new local bacon lines in many stores; and three new sausage lines have recently been launched including pork and South Devon chillies, beef, pork and Cornish Tribute ale, and pork and Wiltshire onion marmalade.

Local brands of bottled water – Cornish Spring Water, Tarka Springs from Devon, and Somerset’s Cheddar Water - are all proving popular. Cornish Rattler cider has been outselling Magners, the giants of the cider world, and Cornish Camembert made by Cornish Country Larder, is outselling the well-established and renowned French Camembert.

Jo Wren, regional marketing manager for Tesco, says providing local produce is a real hit. “We are bringing in more and more local lines because that is what our customers want – in fact we have introduced 35 new local producers in the past year. We now have hundreds of local lines available, and we are determined to source even more. Products are highlighted in store for ease of identification by customers, depicting the county of origin, or the region at the shelf edge.

“Nationally locally-produced food brings in £400 million in sales for Tesco, and we aim to make that £1 billion by the year 2011.

“The immense popularity of local products in the West Country reflects the high quality of the region’s foodstuffs and the wide choice of products available in this part of the UK.”

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