Homegrown Produce in Kenya has trimmed down its staffing levels and re-evaluated its product offer to deal with the increasing demands of the current trading environment.

The company, part of Flamingo Holdings, has released 2,000 of the 8,500 employees at its Kenyan farms, including some senior management, and, said Martin Hudson, director of Flamingo Holdings, is reducing its production of bunched salad onions, in particular.

He said: 'We have taken this decision because we have a very specific window for salad onions and it is harder for us to service that shoulder of the season than suppliers with UK production and 12-month supply.

'As far as other Kenyan vegetables are concerned, we will reduce production in some and increase in others - it is a moveable feast. Kenya remains a very important part of Flamingo UK's supply portfolio, but we source from a number of other countries and we are simply reviewing some of the parts of our Kenyan operation that are becoming more marginal.' The company expects to re-employ many of the released staff when new flower projects come on stream. In addition, developments will include the use of innovative Integrated Pest Management techniques on commercial flower crops to improve quality and worker welfare aspects.

Homegrown is responding to increasing price pressure and spiralling costs and the redundancies, said Hudson, were 'an unfortunate part of the vagaries of the business'. He added: 'We are constantly striving to create more efficiency through the supply chain. We have made great progress in the last decade, specifically in social welfare and environmental matters, but the danger is that progress puts more cost into the chain.' Unwanted, negative media coverage ? in The Guardian and on the BBC's The Real Story ? have disappointed the company in recent months, but have nothing to do with the decision, said Hudson. 'To be fair, the BBC piece was more offensive, as we were not given due time or opportunity to respond and seemed intent on only picking out the worst. At least The Guardian article had a degree of balance.

'Our customers know Homegrown has led the way for a long time internationally on worker welfare issues and provided full support throughout the process.

'Both though illustrated that a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. The journalists and NGOs in question are interfering with third world economies which just cannot replicate the social conditions in the first world. For whatever reason, they choose not to understand that,' he said.

Topics