Free-range egg brand St. Ewe has unveiled a range of liquid eggs in 1kg cartons, produced at its brand-new £13m facility in Cornwall.
Available in Whole Egg, Egg White, and Egg Yolk varieties, the new products have been developed in close partnership with chefs and food industry professionals to meet demands of modern foodservice operators as well as bakeries. The products deliver the flavour, functionality, and reassurance expected from shell eggs in a convenient, ready-to-use format without compromising on provenance or welfare standards, said the family-run business.
Cracked, filtered, and gently pasteurised using precision-controlled technology, the liquid eggs are made from 100% British free-range eggs sourced from St Ewe’s own 70-acre farm near St Austell and its network of other family farms across the Southwest and Wales.
Cracking investments
St Ewe’s move to diversify into liquid egg production was aimed at reducing business risk by widening its customer base as well as extending the shelf life of surplus eggs through pasteurisation.
There are peaks and troughs in demand for fresh eggs throughout the year, noted St. Ewe founder and CEO Bex Tonks, who is also a board member of the National Farmers’ Union. “People tend to eat less in the summer,” she said, adding “you can’t turn the hen off, she’s just going to continue laying”.
Tonks revealed they’d spent years learning about egg pasteurisation “the hard way” with a liquid egg plant at her family’s home farm – making “a monumental number of cockups along the way”.
However, the CEO assured that “the new chapter in our liquid egg journey is going to be far more scientific”. This includes investing just over £13m in a brand-new 32,000 sq ft facility adjacent to their egg packing site near Grampound Road village – £3.5m of which was funded by the Good Growth Programme by Cornwall Council.
Part of this investment was spent on equipment supplied by Italy-based manufacturer Moba, which is far more sensitive than St. Ewe’s liquid egg plant at home, plus a team of engineers trained in pasteurisation theory and microbiology.
Tonks revealed she has known Fabio Gualtieri for over 15 years, whose egg processing equipment company Pelbo was acquired by Moba Group in 2016. “I wanted to work with Fabio because he’s the brains behind the process,” she added.
Egg breaking is an understandably important step prior to pasteurisation. New machinery at St Ewe is able to break up to 72,000 eggs per hour and has banks of AI-enabled cameras monitoring for pieces of shell and other imperfections. The site has space to put in another egg breaker machine, “because we like to grow quickly,” commented Tonks. Further expansion is also planned in the egg packing centre this September with one of its graders, affectionately named ‘Stanley’ coming out and replaced by the 20-lane behemoth called ‘Bertha’.
An important element to maintain consistency is the use of different meshes to allow for variations in the “tightness” of egg whites – arising from different ages of hens and the UK seasons – when separating them from yolks. “One of our biggest goals every day is to try and keep the consistency,” asserts Tonks.
Care must also be made not to ‘denature’ the eggs (ie. change their native liquid state) by overheating or putting them under too much pressure. “If you’re doing that with egg white, you’ll have a massive meringue, which is not helpful,” said Tonks. St Ewe’s new carton packing equipment from Galdi – another supplier in Italy – employs low-pressure pumps, acting a bit like a diaphragm to gently squeeze the liquid egg along pipes.
Pouring out innovation
St. Ewe has appointed Lisa Goodwin-Allen – executive chef of Northcote Manor’s Michelin-starred restaurant – as its ambassador, who helped curate a selection of canapés for a recent launch event in London that showcased the liquid egg’s versatility. These ranged from coddled egg with mushrooms and hash brown topped with egg to a custard tart.
“When you’ve got consistent problems like cracking eggs every day, and their different weights, it really shows in the things you might be baking or creating in the kitchen,” said the chef, adding the flavour of the egg from St. Ewe “very much comes through”.
The liquid whole egg can be used in standard recipes for cakes, muffins, brownies, cookies, and pancakes, while liquid egg yolk can help create fillings or toppings such as custard, pastry cream, or hollandaise. Liquid egg white can be used for macarons, meringues, mousses, foams, and more.
Last year, St. Ewe became the first egg packer in Europe to achieve B Corp status. The company noted that bakeries using its products are able to communicate this sustainability credential as part of a broader quality, animal welfare, or responsible sourcing story through on pack or website claims such as ‘made with British free-range eggs’. It also helps premium brands to reinforce perceptions of craftsmanship and provenance.
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