How have you found your first six months in the job?

It has been very intense and informative so far. We are beginning to sow the seeds and make a difference.

I had been in the catering business for 25 years and had my own restaurant before being involved in the new Wembley stadium project. It has been a challenging time so far at Spitalfields and being accepted by the market people was the first issue to tackle - some of them have been here for a very long time and Spitalfields is the largest market, in purely wholesale terms, in the UK.

I spent two weeks working with some of the companies to get a feel for the market and then spent most of January and February surveying the market to see where all the produce comes from.

Increasing local sourcing is an issue being tackled across all of London’s markets - what efforts are you employing?

In my survey of the market, I found that 30 per cent of product is British, with 10-15 per cent coming from within a 100-mile radius.

When I conduct the survey again in June, the market will then be flooded with British product and I would expect it to represent around 37 per cent of all items sold, with 15-20 per cent sourced locally.

The market is booming at the moment and the reputation of street markets is growing in stature, so it is great for consumers to go to a street market and buy fresh produce that has not gone through distribution centres.

You put a question to the panel on seasonality at this year’s Re:fresh Conference. What are your thoughts on the matter?

We are trying to take a pragmatic approach to seasonality and food miles. It is obviously better to be eating British produce as the price, quality and taste are the best when in season.

But imports are here to stay and we couldn’t do without imported products being on the shelves. Whichever way you look at it, something is seasonal somewhere in the world and it is not possible to turn the clock back on greenhouses, coldstores and supermarkets. We don’t produce enough in this country to deal with [demand].

Another problem is that, with seasonality, you see a lot of promotional campaigns which the grower is asked to pay for with no subsidy and often with two-for-one offers there is a lot of food waste, which is a problem. We still do not have a proper strategy to deal with food security.

Do you think there is an age issue in fresh produce?

There is. It isn’t a sexy industry for kids to want to get into and that is what needs to be improved.

Chris [Hutchinson, chairman of the tenants’ association at New Spitalfields] said at the Re:fresh Conference that we have always managed to replace people in the last few decades while the same debate has raged, but I think that’s ostrich syndrome - the stats prove we have a problem.

I have already introduced some younger, more innovative growers to try to combat this. One of them is Michael Dallaway at Cooks Yard Farm who has a scheme, Rent a Cherry Tree, where people rent his cherry trees, can visit them and pick up to 20kg of fruit. The rest is his and he gets paid even if he has a bad summer. This is the kind of innovation we are trying to encourage.

What are your opinions on food pricing at the moment?

The debate over things such as organic is always underlined by those who can afford it.

Luckily, I can afford to make those decisions but some people cannot necessarily pay for as much produce as they would like. It would help if we could educate around seasonality as, when kids come here, they often don’t know where an onion comes from or what asparagus is, but if they knew what was in season when, then it becomes cheaper to shop. It is then a question of educating the parents.

Personally, I think our food is too cheap in this country, aside from frozen foods, and we should ensure the right price is paid for it.

The Olympics potentially offer a great opportunity to New Spitalfields. What measures are you taking?

The first few months have all been about contacting the right people and telling them we are right opposite the site.

We can’t make the caterers buy from here but, rather than take product from a central distribution hub elsewhere in the country, it is very environment-friendly to nip across the road. We will be doing our upmost to promote it and will be contacting all of the countries to tell them their own local products are available. We are like the United Nations here in our diversity of people and products.

We need to be planning now to make sure the growers plan and can supply British products. Although the Olympics only really hits for six to eight weeks, the ongoing contacts can be excellent.

What work have you been doing with the other business development managers across the London wholesale scene?

We are doing a lot of work on backloading at the moment. It makes a lot of sense, if vans are delivering to places further out of London, to come back with product in them rather than empty - both from an economic and environmental viewpoint.

We are also holding Meet the Farmer days to close up the supply chain and taking a look at farm shops, which perhaps don’t currently supply enough of a range of produce and could benefit from visits to wholesalers.

What other environmental measures have you employed?

Around 65-70 per cent of all the waste at New Spitalfields is recycled on site with plastics and metals separated, pallets broken up and used for wood chip and boxes recycled.

Our organic waste is taken up to a tomato grower and put through an anaerobic digestor, which produces gas for heating tomatoes during production. Those tomatoes then come into the market and the remaining slurry is used as fertiliser.

We are way below average in terms of paying for landfill and it is probably cheaper in the long run, but it is a lot of hard work.

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