The Yorkshire Farmhouse business is quite unique and in some ways, a pioneering business. Established outside of Thirsk, it remains family owned. The family’s philosophy has always been with welfare and quality in mind. As such, they have only and continue to produce only free range eggs from their farms, unlike many of their competitors in the industry. This continued focus, despite sometimes difficult economic times, now makes them the largest free range exclusive producer and packer as measured by the BEIC Lion Code.

Its recent £6m investment in state of the art production and packing systems at two of their sites including Wood Farm in Bedfordshire has supported this growth. The business also plans to continue its expansion with further production and packing capabilities at their third site, Hoads Farm in East Sussex during 2012/13.

BEIC subscribers account for approximately 90 per cent of the UK egg market, which provides consumers with eggs from hens kept to higher standards of animal welfare and hygiene control. According to data from the BEIS, sales of free range eggs have recently overtaken those of cage eggs for the first time.

Director Adrian Potter said: “We have always focused on maintaining the highest standards of animal welfare and have only ever produced free-range eggs, something we are very proud of. Being the UK’s largest free-range only producer is a fantastic achievement and I can only hope that we can encourage more people to consider buying free-range eggs.”

The family firm, which has 200,000 hens, has been producing free-range eggs for more than 30 years and started out with a small flock so Mrs Potter could have eggs “the way they used to taste”. The business has been built upon a firm reputation for high standards of animal welfare thanks to their ‘hen-centric’ approach and has a £18 million turnover. Hens have the run of acres of fields every day and are housed in modern barn-style sheds, creating the preferred environment for hens to lay the highest quality eggs.