A MAJOR poultry producer from East Yorkshire business has announced that it is expanding its free-range offering.

Middleton-on-the-Wolds based Soanes Poultry has invested in the first of four farms that will supply 10,000 free-range birds a week by the end of 2017. The first of the free-range farms is only a few miles from the factory and houses 4,000 birds that forage in a large grass pasture and have a diet based on Yorkshire Wolds-grown cereal.

Soanes Poultry’s general manager, Nigel Upson, said: “We have seen a huge growth in demand for our free-range chicken, particularly from high-end London butchers and closer to home in Yorkshire.

“When the expansion is complete we will be marketing the product as grown on the Yorkshire Wolds so all the sites will be very local to us. We put this demand down to the quality and taste of our offering and the confidence our customers have in the husbandry, care and welfare of these birds.”