SILVER HILL DUCK SILVER HILL; GOLD STANDARD powered by Inside Food & Drink
When Silver Hill Duck began operations in Ireland in 1962, it consisted of founders Ronnie and Lyla Steele, and six top-quality ducks. Over time these were developed into a unique breed, the ‘Silver Hill Duck’. The company now boasts 240 employees, six breeding sites and one production base, generating 82,500 ducks per week. Managing Director Micheál Briody acknowledged that the company owes much of its success to the exceptional quality of its product. Report by Phil Nicholls and Hannah Barnett.
One of the defining characteristics of Silver Hill is that it is a fully integrated premium duck producer. This means all aspects of duck production are owned and controlled by the company, from breeding, egg production, hatching and selection, to processing, cooking and packaging.
Its unique selling point is its distinctive hybrid duck. This breed of Peking duck is fed on a natural diet of wheat, maize and soya, and is exclusive to Silver Hill. The breed has been continually developed over the years to create a product that the company says is full of flavour, succulent, tender and consistent in its quality. As Micheál Briody, Silver Hill’s Managing Director put it, it is the ‘wagyu of duck.’
Duck tales abroad
Silver Hill Duck has been tremendously successful in recent years, both domesti cally and overseas. According to the com pany, the success in Asian markets is due to the superior roasting qualities of the unique breed which commands a premium price
in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau where chefs have christened it ‘The Mother of All Duck’.
Success in Singapore, Mr Briody said, has been exceptional: “We went there in 2014. We started out in one restaurant and we're now in over 350 outlets on the island of Singapore.”
This has had the knock-on effect of opening doors, and borders, in Malaysia: “Getting official market access to Malaysia has been five years in the making with the Malaysian government talking to the Irish government about getting access. We will hopefully be across the line in the coming months,” Mr Briody explained. “There is
a significant demand there. We already have our distributors in situ. The Malaysian market would be considerably bigger than the Singapore market.”
Partnerships are also emerging in the Middle East, Mr Briody revealed: “We have made inroads there in the last 12 months, and we've secured access and a contract with a company called Fresh Express, our distributor in UAE. And the potential of that market is significant. Along with the Southeast Asian market, that is where we’re focusing our growth efforts.”
The market in the UAE attracts affluent diners and chefs experienced at working with high-quality, premium, ingredients
making the Silver Hill product an ideal fit. Exporting to the UAE and Malaysia will also mean adjusting to cultural and reli gious norms. “We had to get that halal cer tification” said Mr Briody, “so we altered our plant and processes to cater for that.”
It seems to have paid off, as Silver Hill Duck now supply 50 high-end hotels and restaurants in Dubai. This includes one of the most revered, and highest, restaurants in the world, Atmosphere on the 122nd floor of the Burj Khalifa.
Unsurprisingly, Silver Hill Duck only work with premium distributors. Mr Briody described the company as ‘very particular and choosy’ about that. “We have a fattier duck than our competitors because of the way we breed it and feed it. That's more expensive than lean meat. If you want to s ell mass scale on a low margin, that's not a good fit for us. And we’re seeking the dis tributor that has the access already to those high-end restaurants. It's the 10% of the 10% of the high-end.”
Overcoming adversity
The company is doing well by any standard, but its success is particularly notable when considering the turbulence of the last few years across all industries. First the 2016 Brexit vote posed challenges for a company based in the Republic of Ireland, with a large market in the UK, and half of its growing farms located across the border, in Northern Ireland. “Very much in the eye of the storm , given our location on the border,” as Mr Briody put it. The company ran a sensi tivity analysis to ascertain how it might cope with declining sales.
Then came Covid. “A great trial run for our sensitivity analysis,” joked Mr Briody. He continued: “It wasn’t as if we simply had to deal with small reductions in sales. Markets all around the world closed overnight along with food services , hotels and restaurants.”
SILVER HILL DUCK I PROFILE
Silver Hill Duck rose to the challenge with the pragmatism of any successful business. Heralding the biggest rebrand in its history, it pivoted towards retail options for the Irish market and launched a nation wide marketing campaign, centred around creating ‘emotional connections’ to eating duck at home.
Most recently, a resurgence of bird flu created a whole new set of problems “It was the inverse of Covid,” Mr Briody reflected, “Covid meant markets closed and we had to reduce production. And then as markets opened up, our production was hit with avian flu.”
For a company so centred around the exclusivity of its duck, avian flu poses a serious issue. Both the breeding and com mercial flocks were impacted. It is testament to how seriously Silver Hill Duck takes its product that it did not compromise.
“It was quite frustrating because demand was high, but we couldn’t produce enough to meet that demand for a number of months in 2022. We had to regenerate our parent and grandparent stock through our breeding lines.” Mr Briody is steadfast on this point: “we could not buy in stock to try and get our numbers up.”
The company was able to adapt, spreading the risk ‘physically and geographically’ by buying more breeding farms, as well
as maintaining biosecurity to maximum levels. Once again, Silver Hill Duck emerged ‘more resilient than ever.’
The future, one duck at a time Silver Hill Duck has many exciting prospects on the horizon with more growth forecast in international markets. Discussions to access the markets in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are ongoing. It now makes sense to look towards expansion at production level. The company is seeking planning permission currently to increase capacity at its plant from 80,000 to 120,000 ducks a week, “approximately a €30 - €40 mil lion investment” according to Mr Briody.
It is a company proud of its work; unwilling to compromise on quality, and massively in demand as a result. Continuing to sus tain high levels of business, the Managing Director forecasts Silver Hill Duck going from strength to strength. As he said, one of the main difficulties he faces nowadays is that the product is so good: “The struggle here is not ‘how are we going to sell more?’ My main issue here every day is ‘how do we produce more?’” n
