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Midlands curry king Abdul Salam, who owns a well-known restaurant near Birmingham, is thickly into Indian sauces and now has his own factory to prove it.Abdul, who won a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s biggest curry in 2005, has branched out into specialist sauce making after 25 years at the helm of his Eastern Eye restaurant in Lichfield.
While his Staffordshire restaurant continues to pull in regulars who have enjoyed Abdul’s exotic dishes for years, his new Masterchef UK factory in Lichfield is pumping out 5,000 jars of paste a week.
Abdul’s Indian restaurant sauces are available at Asian diners throughout the UK and now the Bangladeshi entrepreneur is targeting the mainstream supermarket sector to increase the paste’s profile.
‘I have been working for 37 years in the restaurant trade but running the factory is a totally different world for me,’ he told the Birmingham Mail.
‘Most people in the Indian restaurant market use pastes and curry sauces but I always thought that I could do better than the ones already on the market. At the moment we make eight curry sauces and eight pastes and we are looking to add other products, such as poppadoms, spices and pickles.
‘Since April, we have sold over 180,000 pounds ($333,000) worth of products for use in the UK and we also have orders lined up from Germany, Switzerland, Spain and elsewhere,’ he said.
Abdul’s factory in Eastern Avenue, Lichfield, currently employs around 20 full-time staff and he hopes to increase the workforce to up to 100 depending on demand.
‘I did my homework before launching into the market - I visited India to research the authenticity of spices and also travelled to the Middle East and Africa,’ he added. ‘Our products are now being used by people throughout the UK’s catering sector.’
Abdul has now put his son Mamun in charge of running Eastern Eye while he concentrates on the Masterchef UK business.
