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Hellbent bring South African inspired meat products to Northern Ireland

November 6, 2020

Ulster Rugby players, Louis Ludik and Schalk Van der Merwe were first introduced to College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), Food Technologist Hayley O’Neill back in 2018.  The South African natives had an idea to bring the flavours of South Africa to Northern Ireland.

Being no strangers to success on the sports field, the pair have applied that same winners mentality to their venture into the food industry. Hayley O`Neill, recently caught up with the pair to chat about the inspiration, determination and motivation behind the launch of their South African inspired food business ‘Hellbent’ and to tell us a little more about the creation of Hellbent.

Louis Ludik and Schalk Van der Merwe, founders of HEllbent.

Hayley remembers back to 2018 when she first met the South African duo on their first visit to CAFRE’s Food Technology Centre at Loughry Campus (Cookstown) for an initial discussion about the development of beef products. The vision was to develop a range of burgers and meatballs, while also developing a ‘Boerewors’ a gluten-free, high protein, coiled sausage, inspired by traditional South Africa flavours. From that meeting, Hayley provided a programme of new product development advice and technical support to help Louis and Schalk commercialise their products. The first products were launched 2019 and since then, products have been successfully stocked retail outlets across NI, including Spar, Euro Spar and Vivo. Recently Louis and Schalk joined the ‘Grow with Aldi Programme’ as they continue to be intently focused on consistently delivering high quality products.

Louis Ludik commented that, “The advice and support provided by the Meat Technology Team at CAFRE, Loughry Campus, proved invaluable to us in making decisions about processing and food safety considerations. With their support we gained the technical knowledge required to successfully make these products on a commercial scale.”

Hayley asked the Louis and Schalk about why they decided to bring this product to the supermarket shelves and the answer was simply because they tried to find boerewors in local stores and couldn’t find any.

Louis said, “There isn’t a lot of beef sausages out there, so we started small and experimented with sales to artisan stores and grew the market from there. The locals seem to enjoy Hellbent products just as much as we do!”

Louis continued stating that “We are “Hellbent” on providing consistently good quality products”. 

Louis recommends that you check out the Hellbent website and try the Hellbent beef products on a pizza with some buffalo mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes.

CAFRE’s Food Technology Team can be contacted at Loughry.foodtechnology@daera-ni.gov.uk or follow us at discoverCAFRE on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.