A NORTH Yorkshire company has seen its sales in Asda stores increase by 30 per cent since the horse meat scandal.

The Yorkshire Dales Meat Company already supplies its burgers and steaks to all of its Yorkshire stores and will now feature in 16 in the North of England.

They include Middlesbrough, Bishop Auckland, Stockton and Hartlepool, as well as Grimsby, Hull, Mansfield, Burnley and Colne.

Sales were particularly strong in Harrogate, York, Wakefield, Pudsey, Keighley, Chapeltown and Barnsley.

James Knox, financial director ofthe family-run company, said: “We’re obviously over the moon with these recent sales figures and put it down to an increasing trend of consumers looking to buy meat – and, in particular, beef–from trusted sources since the beginning of the horse meat scandal.

“We pride ourselves on knowing exactly where our meat comes from. If meat doesn’t actually come from our own farm, then you can be sure that it will have been sourced from suppliers that we know and fully trust.”

Yorkshire Dales Meat Company was setup in 2004 by the Knox Family so that they could sell their own brand of meat products.

What started off as a stall on a weekly farmers market rapidly expanded into a catering butchers supplying leading hotels, restaurants and event venues across the North of England, as well as Asda stores.