Chickenlicious Options for Christmas
Buy Local Christmas Campaign 2025 – Tasmanian Irrigation

There’s another poultry option that should be added to your Christmas table this year.

While turkey and duck are frequently the centre of festive celebrations, Nichols Poultry is urging Tasmanians to support local businesses by adding chicken to the menu.

Nichols Poultry was founded in 1988 by the Nichols family and is now owned by TasFoods, an ASX-listed Company based in Launceston that specialises in the processing, manufacturing and sale of Tasmanian agricultural goods.

“When you eat Nichols’ chicken, you know it’s 100 per cent Tasmanian,” TasFoods CEO Josh Fletcher said.

“We are proud that our chicken is 100 per cent natural, RSPCA approved, no chlorine or water is added, it is air chilled and it cooks a lot better than many other poultry products as it is more flavourful and tender chicken.

“Chicken is the cheapest protein source available to consumers and it’s such a versatile meat to prepare for Christmas.”

Whether you roast, stuff, marinate, roll, glaze, sear or simmer your chicken, there are endless festive recipe options.

Nichols Poultry employs 150 people in their hatchery, breeder business and at their Sassafras farm and processing facility. A commitment to environmental sustainability has seen the company generate about 15 per cent of its power needs from an onsite wind turbine, and they compost the litter from their growing sheds to be used as fertiliser on the farm.

Central to the success of their operation is access to water from the Sassafras Wesley Vale Irrigation Scheme. Reliable water is critical not only for the birds’ diet, but also for washing and cleaning of the processing plant to comply with all food safety standards and customer requirements.

“It is imperative that we wash our plant every day so our 100 megalitre water entitlement with Tasmanian Irrigation enables us to operate,” Josh said.

“I think many people take irrigation water for granted, but not us.

“We are very fortunate in Tasmania that the State and Federal Governments continue to invest alongside landowners to build and operate irrigation schemes so that our agricultural and manufacturing industries can expand and intensify.”

Nichols Poultry has applied for an additional 40 megalitres as part of the augmentation of the Sassafras Wesley Vale Irrigation Scheme.

Josh encouraged consumers to support Tasmanian farmers this festive season by actively choosing to buy local Tasmanian grown and sourced products.

“We do see a spike in demand for chicken around Christmas and across the summer months, so let’s hope that this year there is even greater demand for our Tasmanian grown and processed fresh chicken and value-added chicken products.”

For more information about Nichols Poultry, visit Nichols Poultry.

For more information about the Sassafras Wesley Vale Irrigation Scheme, please visit: Sassafras Wesley Vale - Tasmanian Irrigation and the augmentation Sassafras Wesley-Vale Augmentation - Tasmanian Irrigation.