Supermarket listings create jobs at Chinese food firm

07-Oct-2014 - Last updated on 08-Oct-2014 at 16:59 GMT

Golden Dragon has adapted traditional Chinese foods to the UK palate

An increase in interest from supermarkets for Chinese foods has led to the creation of 10 new jobs and a £700,000 investment by one manufacturer.

Family-run Golden Dragon has grown its business by more than 50% in the past three years as a result of supermarkets increasing their uptake of oriental-style foods, Perry Ng, director of Golden Dragon told FoodManufacture.co.uk.

“Asda and Morrisons now make up a large proportion of our business, but we also supply Nisa and are about to go into talks to supply other convenience stores,” he said.

‘More staff’

“This year we are looking to take on two or three more staff and within the next 12 months we could be taking on another seven as the business continues to grow.”

The business, which has been manufacturing Chinese foods for more than two decades, won a new listing with Morrisons this week, as well as a second listing with Asda.

It secured a listing in Morrisons with its black bean ribs and is about to launch a range of shumai dumplings into Asda, Ng revealed.

Golden Dragon also manufactures dim sum, ribs, chops, char sui and pork sui for major Chinese supermarkets, such as Chung Wah.

Make investments

The business’s continued growth had led Ng to make investments in facilities over the years, but he had recently pumped £600,000 into the production line after securing new contracts.

“We’re also about to invest a further £100,000 into a dumpling machine, which makes the product, and a coding machine,” he said. “But that won’t be until January or February next year.”

Up to 17 products are made by the company at the moment, which ships more than 300 cases – each containing 120 packs of products – each week to customers, said Ng.

“The batches that we produce are relatively small at the moment because we want to ensure things are fresh,” he added.

Golden Dragon was set up by Ng’s father in 1989 and originally imported food products from China to sell in the UK.

However, when Ng’s Mum entered the business, his father set up a small manufacturing arm for her to manage, which took over the import side of the business, he said.

“Now we only manufacture foods, which are traditional Chinese products that we enhance to cater for the British palate.”