How we've helped St Ewe Free Range Eggs

With family values at heart, and an interest in good nutrition being a core element of their business, St Ewe Free Range Eggs have been dedicated to producing an egg for everybody for over 40 years.

Based just outside of Truro, the company is going from strength to strength, with expansion plans on the cards both in terms of production and in staffing numbers. With new staff and big plans comes the need for new skills, and St Ewe’s Lisa Harrop came the way of the Skills Hub to do just that.

With the recent doubling of staff to over 30, and with their five-year plan seeing staffing numbers subsequently increase to around 120 people, there remains a definite need for further training in areas such as leadership and management, engineering, and digital marketing, as well as the potential of taking on apprentices.

“We’ve got quite a few staff that have been with the company a while, so as well as new training opportunities it’s great to also give existing staff a bit of a refresh,” Lisa said.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for St Ewe Free Range Eggs however, with COVID-19 having a significant impact on their business. With hospitality venues closing across the UK, those closed doors resulted in 50 percent of St Ewe’s business coming to a standstill.

They didn’t let this put a dampener on their business, however, launching their Shell Out 2 Help Out (#SO2HO) campaign to help avoid as much food waste and support the local Cornish community. The campaign saw St Ewe donate over 250,000 eggs to those in need, and they continue to support food charities through the donation of one egg for every dozen eggs sold across their entire retail range.

With a new sales director coming on board to help take their product nationally, Lisa is buoyant when discussing what the future holds.

“It’s definitely exciting times ahead, we’ve got staff with added motivation now, having embraced the idea of new training and skills. The experience with the Skills Hub has been brilliant, we talked about what we wanted to do but the team dug that little bit deeper to deliver something beyond our expectations,” she said.

The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Skills Hub from October 2017 - June 2023 was part funded by the European Social Fund and match funded by Cornwall Council and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership. The project  received £2,885,993 of funding from the European Social Fund as part of the 2014-2020 European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme in England.