The Andreas Meat Company prides itself on being a family company that’s always evolving.

The company was started in 1990 by Rita and Normal Morrey and was originally called M&K Poultry.

In the past three decades it grew and evolved to include far more than poultry to become the Andreas Meat Company.

It is now run by their grandson Phil Bucuris.

The factory covers 4,000 sq ft and it supplies a local supermarkets, independent retailers, catering outlets and residents.

The company employs 11 people and employs more casual staff for the TT and Christmas.

All the pork, beef and lamb is born, reared and processed on the Isle of Man and is Farm Assured.

When Phil Bucuris’s grandparents began the company, they processed chickens and supplied restaurants and hotels.

The business evolved and they got a recipe from Teare’s butchers in Ramsey to produce sausages, which was the start of their move into more and different sorts of meat.

The company buys 90% of its produce from Isle of Man Meats.

‘The only thing you cannot get on the island, which is quite ironic, is poultry, since we did it years ago,’ Phil said.

The company now produces sausages, bacon, burgers, ham, Manx luncheon meat (a first for the island).

This week it begins Manx corned beef production.

‘It is quite exciting,’ said Phil. ‘We are, as far as I’m aware, the first people in the island to make it.’

The company bought it in and sliced and packaged it but there was a period there supply was disrupted.

‘We went down the route of finding out how hard it would be to produce,’ Phil said.

‘We had a development chef come over from England who showed us how to make the luncheon meat, the corned beef, peri peri meatloaf and white pudding.

‘The two things we chose out of them were the luncheon meat and the corned beef.’

Shoprite expressed an interest in taking on the corned beef before the Tesco takeover was announced.

‘We can make Manx corned beef for the same price as it comes in from Denmark and Brazil.’

So is the Tesco takeover going to cause problems?

‘We’re not dealing with the usual buyers any more,’ Phil said. ‘The conversation hasn’t stopped, it’s changed direction so we have meetings with Tesco over the coming weeks and months to see what sorts of things they would like.’

The company has evolved to do more things itself.

‘Many, many years ago, we used to buy things in and process them. Now we buy 90% of things in their raw state and then we process them by cooking them, curing them or slicing them, packaging them.

‘We’ve generally done what we do now for many years but we are doing more and more of it ourselves from scratch.’

Customers are loyal.

‘Being Manx there is sometimes a price hike that goes with that but not always.

‘Beef on the island is a good price so we can be quite competitive when it comes to burgers, sliced beef and so on.

‘Pork and lamb can be quite expensive but we buy the whole pig, for example.

‘We don’t just buy one part of the pig. We buy the loins, the bellies, the shank, the shoulder, the whole pig.

‘Then we process that pig into our different products like bacon, ham, sausages or whatever we’re doing at the time.’

He added: ‘We do a lot of joints for the little shops because our customer base is quite wide.

‘We deal with catering companies and they take our sausages and bacon. We also deal with Shoprite, EVF, private shops like Andreas Stores and Quayle’s. We do all that side of things as well as selling straight to the customer.’

The company has a website from which customers can order catering products and retail products.

‘For example, if you were doing a barbecue or a wedding yourself, you could go on our site yourself and order four or five kilos of sausages and you would get it at a catering price, which is a lot less than a retail package.’

Customers can order a range of meat packs and orders of £45 or more will be delivered free as the drivers make their way across the island delivering to individuals, shops and restaurants.

‘Because we produce everything from scratch to the finished product, at any point in that production we can take the product out and sell it.

‘We have customers who buy our pork legs and we have customers who buy our gammon, which is a cured pork leg, and we have customers who buy the ham, which is when cured gammon has been cooked.

‘Then we have customers who want to slice that ham. You can buy it at any stage of production.’

A lot of customers are very loyal. Many go to the site every week or two.

‘Just because it’s Manx doesn’t mean it’s that much more expensive,’ Phil said. ‘It’s always going to be cheaper to buy from us directly than it is to go to shops.’

Not only can customers go to the website, but they can ring the office where Kelly Radcliffe, perhaps the voice of the company, can take orders too.

Some customers have unusual requests like pork cheek or a pig’s head. That is no problem for the Andreas Meat Company.

‘We have butchers on site to do that work,’ he said.

Staff can also help farmers with ‘home kill’.

‘A farmer or someone with a few pigs can send those pigs to Isle of Man Meats, have them sent to us once they have been slaughtered and we can do sausages, bacon, gammon, ham from those pigs,’ said Phil.

Christmas isn’t far away and preparations are well under way.

Cranberry chipolata sausages will be on the table of many customers. The company did it on a smaller scale for Shoprite last year.

‘This year we’re launching the cranberry chipolatas with our main range,’ said Phil. ‘We’re also doing pork and sage stuffing, sleeves and pork and sage balls.’

Of course, there are turkeys as well.

The company sources those Christmas turkeys from Germany.

‘Last year, with bird flu, it was quite hard to get hold of turkeys but we managed to get hold of some turkeys last year that were absolutely fantastic. They sold really well, so we have gone for the same supplier this year.’

Phil commented on the closure of Radcliffe’s butchers in Castletown.

‘We’ve worked closely with them over the years,’ he said. ‘They’ve been very helpful to us. We used to buy our chicken and turkey and other bits and piece from them. They make very good sausages as well.

‘I think it’s a shame that they are closing. They are another big buyer of Manx meat. So that’s a loss for the local economy.’

Phil has been involved in some way or other with the company since he was a child.

‘I’ve grown up with the company and worked for it on holidays or after school.

‘I really enjoy working with the people who are here. Some people have been working here for 17 years.

‘We like to try to look after everyone and try to create a family atmosphere.

‘We are a family-owned company and we really do see our staff as part of our own family.

‘Whenever they have problems, we like to be able to help them out in any way we can.’