A FARMER who dared to take on the supermarket giants at home has received a major award for export achievement.

Potato grower William Chase was fed up with being squeezed by the multi-national food retailers, so he set up his own upmarket crisp-making business.

Now Leominster-based Tyrrells Potato Chips has won the prestigious Best New Exporter of the Year title at the annual Food from Britain Export Awards.

The achievement reflects the company's commitment to developing its overseas business in markets such as France, Scandinavia, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Denmark.

Tyrrells Potato Chips exports a number of its distinctive potato chips, as well as hand-fried fruit and root vegetable chips, to some of the finest food halls in Europe. In just one year the company has achieved exports equalling 5.7 per cent of its total sales.

Explaining why Tyrrells had won the award, Simon Waring, marketing and international management director at Food from Britain, said: "The judges were extremely impressed with the company's commitment to exporting. It has challenged consumers with new tastes and overcome some cultural hurdles."

Catherine Henley, marketing and PR manager at Tyrrells, added: "We are delighted to have won recognition with this prestigious Food from Britain Export award. There are exciting times ahead for Tyrrells, with exports a real focus for the future. We have put a great amount of effort into exporting, so it is very rewarding for our work overseas to be recognised in this way."

Mr Chase had farmed at Tyrrells Court, near Leominster for more than 20 years before his business took an abrupt, and successful, change of direction.

"Most of the clean skinned 'perfect' potatoes grown were supplied to supermarkets," he explained, "but this often left us feeling detached, without any feedback or thanks from end customers.

"With continual price pressure from the supermarkets, I realised a change direction was needed. I wanting to remain in farming, so I decided to focus our efforts on producing a great tasting product that could be made out of the Tyrrells potatoes."

With the idea to make potato chips, spring 2002 was spent travelling the world in search of the equipment and recipes needed to make the very best hand-cooked chips in the UK with

pedigree.

Summer 2002 was then spent in one of the old potato sheds with a small fryer making and refining the very first packets of Tyrrells potato chips.

As a result of the fantastic response to these early chips, and as demand increased, William Chase decided to convert one of the large potato stores into a modern, fully accredited production facility.

Tyrrells now employs a team of 42 staff all fully trained in all aspects of the chip-making process, and with approximately 400,000 bags of chips flying out of the warehouse door each week to more than 4,500 direct customers, there isn't a minute to rest.

One of the secrets behind the taste of Tyrrells crisps lies in the careful selection of older varieties of potato such as Lady Rosetta, Hermes, Golden Wonder and Record.

The production process involves the potatoes being peeled and sliced into thickly cut slices, before being hand-fried in pure sunflower oil.

They are delicately flavoured with Tyrrells own blends before being packaged in eye-catching bags designed by the team themselves.

October 2005 saw Tyrrells Potato Chips scooping the prestigious SAGE & Daily Telegraph Fastest Growing Business of the Year Award, in addition to the five Gold Great Taste Awards handed the company at the recent Guild of Fine Food Retailer Awards.

"I believe that our success is down to a combination of an uncompromising approach to product quality, building excellent contacts with customers and the sheer determination to produce the finest hand-cooked chips in the United Kingdom," commented Mr Chase this week.