When Bex Tonks had the idea of changing from producing eggs on her parents’ Cornwall farm to building a major egg brand, she started with the basics. “I wanted to make our egg boxes look very different and brighten up the aisle, so went for blue pulp cartons with a label that showcased the Westcountry coastline with golden sand and pebbles,” Tonks explains.
“It was July, and we took chickens down to our local beach to get pictures of footprints in the sand… The holidaymakers thought we were nuts, the chickens ended up all over the place and the outcome was chaos.” Some things, the entrepreneur decided, were worth investing in: she hired a local photographer who reshot the chickens with play sand on their own farm, rather than by the sea. “Hey presto, we had artwork that was worthy,” Tonks laughed. “Looking back, it was hilarious, but at the time it was stressful.”
That was back in 2007 – and the brand built with those first chicken photos, St Ewe Free Range Eggs, now has a £51 million turnover. It employs 130 people with 300 million eggs each year packaged by hand into boxes that are sold in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Ocado.
Tonks, who is 48, grew up on a poultry farm, whose eggs were sold to one of the UK’s largest egg producers. Then she decided to build a brand and sell direct to the supermarkets. The lightbulb moment, she says, “was a curiosity of where our eggs were being sold and telling our story. We put a lot of effort into producing beautiful eggs and never really knew what customers thought.” The family spent £10,000 converting a cow shed into a packing centre, buying an egg grader, and organising packaging – including that coastal jaunt. “Then we called national supermarkets to see if there was an opportunity to start the listing process, handed in our 12-month notice with the national egg packer we supplied, took many deep breaths and ran with it.”
St Ewe Free Range Eggs launched in 2007 in its local Asda, then Sainsbury’s.
“We packed eggs into the evenings and Mum and I delivered packed eggs the following morning, after the school run,” Tonks, a mother of two, explains. Demand grew fast: revenues rose from £5.8 million in 2021 to £11.7 million in 2023, before jumping to £51 million last year. St Ewe now has contracts with 50 British farms, whose eggs are sent to Tonks’ Cornwall plant to be boxed and sent on to retailers.
St Ewe’s growth was noticed by rivals: “a supermarket copied our ‘Super Egg’ brand and other companies are pushing similar products to our iconic ‘Rich Yolk’ – but we’re not worried, as we’re working on the next innovations and that is what we enjoy the most,” Tonks says. “We are currently investing in a liquid egg processing plant and new warehouse so we have lots of exciting plans afoot for the future.”
“Seeing our St Ewe brand in a kitchen or a supermarket shelf is the greatest honour ever – it will always give me a massive sense of pride knowing how far our family farming business has come from chasing chickens on the beach.”
Read more about St Ewe Free Range Eggs via their website and read more of our scaleup stories here.
Bex Tonks, Founder of St Ewe Free Range Eggs
