GOURMET food producer Tanfield Food has signed a deal with supermarket Sainsbury's.

The County Durham company now supplies its Look What We Found range of restaurant-quality convenience meals to Sainsbury's and Waitrose nationwide in contracts worth a total of £2m.

The deal comes after Tanfield signed up another two farmers in the region to supply meat for a new dish in the ready-meal range.

Keith Gill, co-founder of Tanfield Food, in Consett, said: "We have established ourselves in Waitrose, where sales are very good, and we have just launched in Sainsbury's.

"Our brand is in the ambient section of the supermarket, with the canned goods, and it has already helped to liven things up. The response has been fantastic."

Tanfield set out last year to produce a range of gourmet meals that are sealed and cooked in pouches, which can be stored for up to a year without using preservatives.

The meat and fish for the dishes is provided by farmers and producers from across the North-East, whose faces are pictured on the front of the products.

Two farmers in Darlington, Robin Hirst and David Metcalfe, supply beef through local company Country Valley Foods for Tanfield's new meal, Beef in Fortis Stout. Mr Hirst, who farms at Neasham Grange, said: "We are constantly working to improve the product, through rearing techniques, so that the meat we supply is the best it can be.

"I think having the face of the farmer on the front of the packaging reinforces the fact that the product is made locally.

"Meat doesn't have to be imported from the other side of the world and travel thousands of miles when it can be produced in England in a traditional way."

Mr Metcalfe said the new product will see the number of cows he rears on his 250-acre farm in Burtree Lane increase by 100, to more than 300 per year.

Stewart Munro, of Country Valley Foods, in Hurworth, Darlington, helped establish the partnership between the two farmers and Tanfield.

He said: "The meat is of an extremely high quality. It goes through a selection and grading process when it comes to us, when it comes back from the abattoir and before it goes out to Tanfield.

"The dish itself is superb and I know Tanfield are looking at new products all the time.

"There is massive potential and I see that company growing and growing."