Where you have worked in your decade in the produce industry?

I came into produce after working in the textiles industry for about 10 years. I joined Greenery UK in 2005 as managing director, and I was previously at Lingarden Flowers for seven years.

The flower and produce businesses are very similar. I joined Greenery UK because I felt I understood the products and the customer base.

The fresh produce business appeals because of its pace - it is very fast-moving, has very low margins and is a very challenging and exciting environment. You can be in real trouble one minute and have solved it completely in the next.

So why did you leave?

It seems like I have a tendency towards a 10-year itch, and after a decade in produce I felt it was time for a new challenge.

Greenery UK is a great business, with good people and good products. But it sold its wholesale business, which was a third of its turnover, and I thought that signalled it was time to leave.

I am now managing director of Choices Video, supplying retailers with DVDs, electronic gaming and music. I have spent 10 years in clothing and 10 years in produce and now am working in the home entertainment industry - it sounds silly, but they are remarkably similar.

What was your proudest moment at Greenery UK?

That would have to be turning the business from a loss-making enterprise into a profit-making one. When I first joined it was losing half a million a year, but we managed to tighten things up, get it working again and make some money.

What changes have you seen in your 10 years in the produce industry?

In the last decade there has been a lot of consolidation in terms of the supply base. Supermarkets have cut back on the number of suppliers they deal with and given more business to their existing suppliers. This has given them leverage with economies of scale and benefited their margins.

I would say that some of the margins the supermarkets make on their core basic produce lines are immoral. In certain cases, they are making well over 45 per cent.

However, shrinking their supply base poses two problems for supermarkets. First, it exposes their risk - if one supplier goes under they will have an issue. Over the next

12-24 months, retailers need to be careful not to squeeze their supply base too much. But I predict that early next year, one or two produce suppliers will be squeezed out of business. The multiples need to be aware that dealing with a small amount of larger suppliers exposes their risk, and it is not a great career move for any buying manager to lose a supplier.

Second, as they have benefited from higher margins, the traditional multiples have left themselves exposed to the discounters, who are only looking to make 20 per cent profit from a product, not 40 per cent. They sell the same product, from the same nurseries or fields and are now assessed to the same standards, such as GlobalGAP. Some of the discounters’ deals expose the multiples as being very expensive.

This has been exploited by the discounters and suddenly people are discovering they sell the identical products, just cheaper. This is a very recent change of tack in the market, but must be causing a lot of headaches among the big four.

So how do you predict the next year will pan out?

The next 12-14 months will be tough and the retailers will need to be aware of that or their supply base will simply go under.

This autumn will be very difficult, and there may well be casualties just after Christmas. Unfortunately, I think the sector needs it - it might be a wake-up call to some of the retailers. No buyer wants to receive the phone call telling them their biggest supplier has just gone under.

However, in defence of the retailers, what I would say is that the produce industry never knows when to celebrate success and say when it has done well. Some growers and suppliers are like a stuck record, saying they have always had a bad year. They have been ‘crying wolf’ for so long that the buyers have now switched off - this could prove tricky.

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