A BOLTON bakery has found an unexpected new market -- in the Falkland Islands.

Islanders and some of the soldiers still stationed there have developed a taste for steak pies, pasties and sausage rolls made 8,000 miles away at Greenhalgh's Craft Bakery in Lostock.

The family-owned company, which employs more than 900 people and has an annual turnover of £20 million, has built up an overseas market in the last three or four years after obtaining an export licence.

Products have proved popular with expatriates, holidaymakers and even some of the locals in destinations such as Spain, Cyprus, Tenerife, Greece and the Balearic Islands.

The UK distributor who arranged these deals later suggested the Falkland Islands and the South Atlantic community took its first shipment of several hundred pies six months ago.

Two more deliveries have followed and the order is now in thousands.

"They keep ordering more," said 78-year-old Allan Smart, the man who founded the company with his wife Kathleen 45 years ago.

"No one else makes them as good as I do," he said proudly.

Exports now make about five per cent of the output for the Crescent Road business.

Mr Smart, who has been baking since he was nine, started the business in 1957 in a shop in Lee Lane, Horwich.

He started work at 4am and got home at 9pm, except for Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays when he stayed at the shop and slept at a table with a bag of flour for a pillow.

Since the move to Crescent Road in 1971, the company has expanded to the point where it has 38 stores across the North-west and supplies a growing number of own-branded products to leading supermarket groups including Tesco, Safeway, Morrisons and Booths.

A 32,000 sq ft production facility half a mile away is used mainly for an expanding range of frozen products, including those which are exported.

Mr Smart remains chairman and managing director and has no intention of retiring.

The other directors are Mrs Smart (company secretary), son David (bakery production), daughter Anne Busby (human resources) and Ray Lyons (finance).

The plan is to open 10 more shops in 2003 -- if suitable locations can be found -- and to find new outlets for a range of ready meals now on sale at the shops.