St Ewe Free Range Eggs is growing rapidly while gaining plaudits for its philosophy of sustainable and empathetic business. Michael Barker reports
At a time when the myriad challenges facing poultry businesses mean they could be forgiven for simply hunkering down and catching their breath, one Cornish egg packer has hit the accelerator and propelled itself into the big leagues of UK supply.
Truro-based St Ewe Free Range Eggs has enjoyed extraordinary growth in the past three years, turbo-boosting its turnover from just £11.6m in 2023 to £51m in the year to March 2025 on the back of a strategy to provide the highest-quality products to the hospitality and retail sectors. Backed by a twin desire to support the health and welfare of both birds and people, its impressive performance persuaded judges to crown it Egg Packer of the Year at the 2025 National Egg & Poultry Awards (NEPA). That capped off a stellar 2025 which also saw St Ewe listed in 53rd place in The Sunday Times 100 ranking of fastest-growing British companies.
The business is in a period of expansion that has seen its brand rolled out in national retail while simultaneously investing significantly into new business areas and exploring diversification opportunities. At the heart of its next phase is a significant spend on new infrastructure, in the form of a new high-tech pasteurisation plant that is set to open in spring 2026. The project is part-funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, with Cornwall Council in turn responsible for managing projects supported by the fund through the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Good Growth Programme.
The plan represents a further sign of the company’s ambitious evolution of its portfolio. “We used to pasteurise liquid egg back on our home farm using old second-hand kit, which was always quite challenging,” explains chief executive Rebecca Tonks. “So it felt like the right time to start investing in taking the egg another step further and widening our market. It’s really exciting.”
While the potential of the new plant is vast and it represents a great opportunity to produce more branded products, the attitude is very much for the business to walk before it can run. “We’re initially just going to be doing the basics,” Tonks says. “We need to make sure it’s efficient and then we’ll start playing around more. But for now we’re just going to keep it simple.”
The investment is just another sign of the company’s burgeoning output and reputation. Today, St Ewe has around 1.3 million birds and 142 staff, but both those numbers are set to rise in the near future. The site expansion is bringing with it a phased recruitment of new team members, while the company has also recently acquired a neighbouring farm with the intention of putting up a new poultry unit. “Back on our home farm we had four small 3,000-bird units, but they’ve been running for over 40 years now so it was time for an upgrade,” Tonks explains. “We actually took two out of agricultural use and converted them into an equestrian yard, so we’ve now got quite a few horses there and a lady running her horse-training business on the site, so that’s something of a diversification business for us.”
Meeting the extra capacity will mean expanding the producer base as well. Already working with more than 50 family farms across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it brings opportunity for both existing and new producers to grow their business alongside St Ewe. A key part of the company’s work will continue to involve closely collaborating with those farmers to continuously improve the standards of hen welfare and provide the best-possible eggs.
The company’s recent trajectory has not just been about expanding physical infrastructure, however, as Tonks has also been looking at how the business can evolve from a management perspective. To that end, she’s both refreshed the board and revamped the corporate structure to bring in an additional level of management to help properly train staff and handle the enlarged business. “That’s been really important, and I’m really proud of each of our departments,” she says. “They are awesome at dealing with all the things they’re doing. For example our technical team – we became BRC accredited this year, and got a AA straight off. So there’s been a lot going on and it’s been quite a fun year.”
Family values
The board revamp includes the addition of new non-executive directors, and with the presence of Tonks’ sister Jemima and son Charles, it makes for a good mix of family and outside influence. Jemima only joined the business this year, and brings a different perspective with her background as a teacher. Her arrival also bolsters the family presence at a time when Tonks’ parents Richard and Christine – now in their mid 70s – are taking more of a backseat.
It’s important to have that family vein running through the business, at a time when farming families are under increasing pressure from what many producers deem to be unsupportive government policy and the threat of bigger, more corporate operators and private equity investors looking to gobble up their business.
For Tonks, the focus on human welfare goes even deeper than that and hits at a deeply personal tragedy. In 2001, her brother took his own life in a devastating moment that will never be forgotten. “It really reset the dial for all of us for being a values-driven family business,” she says with touching candour. “It makes you realise and value life very differently, and people very differently. So that is why we do the things we do, because that’s our DNA and that’s how we operate.”
Tonks agrees to discuss the tragedy because she sees it as one way to remember her brother, and further tangible tributes come in the way St Ewe values the mental health of both its staff and producers, and contributes significant sums of money to charity. “We work with mental health groups as well,” she reveals. “Everyone always thinks sustainability is just about green leaves, but it runs a lot deeper than that.”
That sense of a family feel encompasses the way the company interacts with its employees. “My view is that people spend quite a lot of time at work, and I want them to feel like this is an extension of their home,” she explains. “So we have a kitchen downstairs with tables with lots of fruit on, we have our team meetings in the kitchen and host monthly brunch clubs for the team. This is our home, and some of the best decisions are made around the kitchen table.”
Tonks is concerned about the pressure on producers, and feels other farming sectors have been better at supporting them while the poultry sector has been “a bit late to the party” considering the strain that avian flu has brought. To that end, there are weekly check ins with producers, whether that’s from the lorry drivers or members of the poultry or sales teams. “It’s hard work when you’re quite confined to the farm, and then maybe you do the school run and are back on the farm again and you don’t have much of a life away from it. So it’s about recognising that and being more understanding and appreciating people.”
Sustainable business
For such a successful business owner, Tonks has a grounded, unpretentious attitude. She is liberal in praise of her team and also puts a lot down to the good fortune of “being in the right place at the right time”, even though there’s little doubt the success really owes much to intricate planning and smart business decisions.
The company’s performance did enough to catch the attention of Tesco, which agreed to the rare step of St Ewe stepping up from being a regional supplier to a national one. “They said that’s a bit unusual,” she smiles. “We like being unusual.” Business has also been growing with Sainsbury’s in a further reflection of the company’s transition to being a significant national player in UK egg supply.
Given the supermarkets’ heavy focus on sustainability, St Ewe has given itself a further point of difference by becoming the first egg packer in Europe to achieve B Corp status, a process that took three hard years to attain. Upon approval in March 2025, B Lab described St Ewe’s mission as “to be leaders in innovation and warriors of welfare, whilst staying true to the positive, nurturing, bold, and transparent family values that have shaped every decision made across the generations.”
For Tonks, making the move to go for B Corp status was about reinforcing what the company was already doing and formalising processes within the fabric of the business. “What it means for us is a real focus on how we operate,” she says. “It’s like a double checker – every decision we make or project we are looking at doing, we question ourselves and ask how does it fit in with our values. It’s been a really helpful gauge right across the business.”
The process has seen an amplified focus on recruiting local employees, using local suppliers, working on projects for sustainable soy and carbon capture, and reporting data, as well as management-specific work on topics such as governance and health and safety.
Communicating the message
St Ewe is active on social media and has a lively website to communicate its message and provenance to consumers. In typical fashion, Tonks gives high praise to her marketing team for its work in showcasing the business at its best: “It’s about celebrating things that are happening in each department and making sure they’re a window into what we do – it’s really important that people can see through that window and it’s a way for us to share our story.”
While communicating the certification to consumers is naturally important, Tonks says it has actually resonated most in the hospitality market, where clients appreciate that extra level of sustainability and traceability. It’s also helped with recruiting staff in Cornwall, which has the second-highest number of B Corp businesses in the country after London, and younger people in particular seek out employers with values.
There is plenty of work going on to progress the company towards its sustainability goals, but Tonks does not believe one should be too prescriptive about what that path should look like. “There are lots of ways to make changes and improve what you do,” she says. “We’ve got lots of different trials, and ideas that are waiting to be tested as well, though I can’t really say anything about that yet.”
Things are going extremely well at St Ewe right now, but Tonks is very aware that things can change in an instant. She worries about the lack of confidence in the farming sector generally, and of the impact of the ongoing battle against the government’s controversial new inheritance tax (IHT) rules. “For me, the currency is always confidence, and there isn’t a lot of that about in the farming sector at the moment,” she says frankly. “I would ask [the government]: why are you doing what you’re doing when you know food production is so incredibly important? It feels like the government’s not really recognising that, or giving it the kudos it deserves. The standards and all the hard work that British farmers put into what they’re doing today is outstanding, and I want to shout that out. It’s truly impressive what people are doing, and we should be so, so proud. But then to be told we’re importing products… that’s quite demoralising.”
Tonks, endearingly modest, was flabbergasted to win the NEPA award. “There are lots of packers that deserve this, and we’re so honoured that we received it,” she says. “We share that with all of our farmers and all of our team. We’ve very, very grateful and it means a lot.”
Amid such an intense few years of growth, St Ewe could be forgiven for taking a breather, but with the new facilities up and running in the new year, there’s little chance of that. Instead, it’ll be fascinating to see where this innovative business goes next as it continues its exciting journey.