THE great egg race is on for a York firm which supplies the needs of the county's expatriates as it rushes to get fresh, Yorkshire eggs to Hong Kong.

A breakfast of boiled eggs and toast soldiers just wasn't the same for British expats living in the former British colony, who called on York-based internet supermarket expatshopping.com to get the genuine Yorkshire free-range article out to them.

So after a lot of thought, the firm hit upon a route for the eggs, involving three road journeys and two flights, which would get them to breakfast tables in Hong Kong within three days of being laid.

Sales and Marketing Director Simon Aldrich, who is one of the founders of the business, began a search among local farms for an egg production unit that could meet the quality demands.

He settled on Freedom Farm in Catton, near Thirsk.

The eggs are laid and collected on the farm of a Sunday evening and delivered to the warehouse of expatshopping.com in York on Monday morning, where they are carefully packed into special containers.

They are then driven to Manchester for the Monday night flight to Heathrow.

On Tuesday morning, they are loaded onto the early flight for Hong Kong, where they are taken on yet another road journey, to be on the shelves of three branches of swanky expat emporium Oliver's in time for breakfast on Wednesday morning.

Simon said: "We are no longer surprised by any request that we get, but arranging for farm fresh, free range eggs to be on the breakfast table in Hong Kong three days later took some doing."

The service has proved so popular that expatshopping.com is now sending out more than 1,000 eggs a week. They are part of a larger contract to supply a whole range of British products to the Oliver's chain.

The firm aims to provide the 13.5 million British expats around the world with the favourite foods from home that they can't obtain locally.

In this case, you could call it an egg-sacting order.

Updated: 08:45 Friday, October 19, 2001