Harry Hill mans the tills at Oxfam to sell his fairtrade nuts
The television presenter Harry Hill is going to be working behind the till at the Oxfam store on Kensington high street in London. The idea is that people are going to come to the store to buy fair trade products that bear the name of the star. The range is called Harry’s Nuts!
These products, which include cashews, peanuts and other varieties, are available for sale in 200 Oxfam stores across the country. They are available in the food section of the store, but the shop also sells all of the second-hand items that they are more famous for.
These nuts by Mr Hill are a fairtrade product and the celebrity is not making any money from their sale. He came up with the idea as a way of helping farmers in Malawi sell their crops in the UK. The fairtrade deal means that they consistently get a fair price for their products.
The products are also available at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, The People’s Supermarket and other outlets. Harry says: “Great news that Oxfam is stocking Harry’s Nuts!. We roast them for longer to make them extra tasty – so Oxfam shoppers will love them.”
Andrew Horton, Oxfam’s trading director, says: “Oxfam has learnt through years of working in developing countries, how important it is to support smallholder famers. We’ve seen time and again how helping poor farmers sell their products to new markets creates an income which will not only change their lives but those of whole communities.
“Fairtrade products are really popular with our shoppers, and the extra bonus is that if customers buy their Harry’s Nuts! from our shops they will also be raising funds to support Oxfam’s work fighting poverty around the world.”
The peanuts come from farming groups in Malawi , Mozambique and Nicaragua. The cashews are from smallholder farms in Mozambique and India. The TV Burp star is a big salted peanut lover and long-standing supporter of Fairtrade.
Liberation Foods was established with financial backing from Comic Relief and other charities to help smallholder nut farmers and gatherers trade their way out of poverty. The company is owned by farming organisations, charities and other ethical investors and is purely run for the benefit of the farmers who are represented on the company’s board.
Liberation Foods supplies 80% of the UK ’s Fairtrade nuts to major supermarkets under the Harry’s Nuts! and Liberation ranges, and in the natural nuts sold at Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons for their own label ranges.
The development of a peanut crop in Malawi which is high enough in quality and big enough in quantity to be exported to the UK and used in products such as Harry’s Nuts! has led to a brand new project in Malawi – the Afri-Nut Company Ltd – a peanut processing plant in the capital, Lilongwe .
This plant will be used to blanch and process the peanuts and the paste created there will be used in ‘Plumpy Nut’ accredited sachets – Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods – to help fight malnutrition in children in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa .
For more information see www.chooseliberation.com/harry or www.facebook.com/harrysnuts
