Mark
Gorton
Traditional Norfolk Poultry
Upon leaving school I had a deep desire to become a farmer. For some bizarre reason I had always liked poultry, I still don’t really know where that came from other than the fact my parents kept a dozen egg laying birds when I was a junior.
I spent 4 years at agri college gaining a Diploma in Agriculture before I stepped out onto the career ladder.
We lived on a small holding of about 3 acres even though I was the only person in the family who had any interest in farming, so I was able to experiment with various money making ventures based around agriculture.
I tried breeding squab pigeons, growing niche vegetables and fattening pigs but it wasn’t until I tried, along with business partner David Garner, 12 Christmas turkeys that we found something that actually worked and made some profit.
The rest as they say is history, we kept doubling up our numbers year on year with a few big leaps along the way and also started to grow organic chickens. This was about 20 years ago and most people thought we were mad, but along with our beliefs for higher welfare standards we felt that the market needed something new.
As we grew the company, we started to supply high street retailers around about the turn of the millennium and shortly after invested in a brand new purpose built 35,000 sq foot processing factory, which is now one of the best factories in the UK.
We have kept with our beliefs over the years and have never got involved with growing broilers, we are not looking to do massive numbers but would rather keep the volumes low but the quality high.
All our chickens and turkeys are grown on our own or on contract farms so that we can maintain full control of our supply chain. From there on everything is processed in our factory.
The business is currently turning over <> £6 million a year and our product range includes Organic Chicken and Turkey, Corn Fed and Free Range Chicken and Free Range Turkey. We grow to OF+G and Soil assn standards and also to Freedon Food Standards.
