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Wayne Milne 

One thing that strikes me when I meet Wayne Milne is that he is a man with a plan. The new MD of Newmafruit International, and director of Newmafruit Farms, has joined the business with the remit of turning around the fortunes of the Kent fruit supplier, and he is not wasting time getting down to the job.

It’s not the first time he has transformed a business – as a founding manager at new joint venture Integrated Service Solutions (ISS), Milne and operations director Gavin Knight were handed an empty building and a blank piece of paper.

Three years later, they had turned it into a lean service provider with a turnover of £20 million, having hired everyone from the cleaners upwards, navigating the needs of two joint venture shareholders and getting the first fruit out of the door.

Now, he is getting his teeth into a new challenge and has a similar three-year turnaround plan for Newmafruit, with profits, not turnover as his main concern.

“In this industry, everyone knows everything. Before I joined Newmafruit, I knew everything that was going on. That was the challenge for me and that’s what I wanted to get stuck into.

“ISS turns over £20 million, and makes a decent bottom line. I expect the same from this business. You look at the historical accounts and it is possible, it’s just over the past year or so it’s gone a little pear shaped. If you look at the numbers it’s there to be had,” he says.

Milne’s initial strategy has two sides: create joint venture-style agreements with other produce companies in order to offer a retailer a 12-month supply of fruit, and target discounters Aldi and Lidl as their ongoing growth begins to require a more efficient and consolidated packing base.

Part of the Asplins Producer Organisation, Milne is also pragmatic about what will happen if the POs lose their funding post-Brexit, envisaging a partnership similar to the Greenyard-Bardsley Farms tie-up to help Newmafruit into the future.

“I’m not sure there’s a need for POs if there’s no funding,” he says. “Now that the retailers are wanting more of a direct relationship, most of the stuff we have to do as a business internally. The thing we’ve got to change is we have to do some joint ventures with some bigger produce businesses.

“We’re trying to get linked up with some strawberry importers that have already got that direct link with the retailer. We’re also talking to produce businesses that currently supply imported topfruit and saying to them let’s link up, we’ll give you our topfruit and in return we’ll do some of their imported topfruit.

“That’s the only real future. I don’t think we could survive as a business on our own without the PO, unless we join up with some other produce businesses.”

Currently the two arms of business – Newmafruit International and Newmafruit Farms – are registered separately on Companies House, something that is also reflected in Milne’s split role and how he views the strategies for both sides.

“The last MD was over both businesses, but I don’t know enough about farming to say I’m the MD of Farms. There’s a big growing community that wouldn’t accept that,” he explains. “I want to be a director of it and I want to get involved, but I will earn my wings as time goes on, and then I’ll become MD of Farms. That’s my intention.”

Maintaining profitability is “relatively simple” for International, continues Milne, who says the marketing arm has already won some good service provision contracts. “It’s about sustaining them and doing a good job,” he says. “In farming, it’s about understanding what people want. There’s no point in continuing to farm Bramley if that’s not what people want.

“We have a lot of fantastic young orchards that are fully irrigated with modern post and wire systems that will come into harvest in the coming years. We are also planning to plant an additional 100,000 trees over the next two years and we have some that are now reaching the end of life, so we’re at the stage of saying do we rip them out and plant more topfruit, or do we diversify and say to the retailers, what do you want?”

“I don’t think the market is specifically for more topfruit, I think it’s about diversifying,” he adds.

Close relationships with retailers and other businesses are clearly important to Milne’s vision for Newmafruit, and he is not shy of drawing on his own wide-ranging network in produce. Having left ISS on good terms with shareholder Direct Produce Supplies (DPS), he previously spent ten years at IPL before moving to Kent packer Cross and Wells.

He sees himself as the man to lead Newmafruit forward for now, and since it’s no secret that there’s no next generation in line to take over from longstanding company owner Melvyn Newman, Milne believes the ultimate goal must be that the company becomes profitable enough to sell.

“That’s probably the end goal for Newmafruit. Get it back on the road to recovery and profitable, and then put it up for sale and let someone buy into it. But I hope that the joint ventures with produce companies will make it attractive to them, and they kind of absorb it.”

After securing initial contracts, Milne plans to invest in new machinery and a facelift at the company’s Chartham packhouse. He’s particularly proud of a new cherry grader, part of his plan to become an appealing central packing facility, which was set up as a JV between Newmafruit and Greenyard to offer a grading service for Greenyard’s cherry supply chain.

A big believer in change as a force for good, Milne believes that if the company stands still, “everyone else will grow around us”, an attitude he says he doesn’t always see in UK fresh produce. “I think if I compare farming to service provision, farming seems to have become lazy over the years,” he says. “If someone’s done something historically, then it’s been left like that. We have to push boundaries and always challenge our processes to ensure we are always at the forefront.

“The business has got huge potential. It’s got a good brand name, everyone knows Newmafruit, but you can lose that very quickly.”

With a book full of contacts and no lack of ambition, Milne is determined to drive Newmafruit into the future. At a time when British fruit supply needs all the success it can get, it’s a mission that others will be watching closely.

Get to know Wayne Milne

Who do you admire in the industry and why?

Jacqui Green from Berry Gardens. She was my manager at IPL and she coached me through and gave me my next challenge. She’s definitely a role model and she’s done great things at Berry Gardens. I’ve learnt a lot from Jacqui.

What would you change about the industry?

If I could change one thing, it would be the arrogance of retailers before, not so much now. I think they now have a better understanding of what we do and how we do things, and a bit more respect, because years ago there wasn’t any. Tesco has changed a lot over the years. Dave Lewis’s leadership has changed Tesco and they now have far more respect for suppliers. It’s not easy what we do, and there are a lot of challenges that we face as businesses.

What are your thoughts on Brexit?

I’m not worried. There are a lot of people who are worried, and I don’t think I am. Whether seasonal workers will be allowed in is yet to be agreed, but I don’t think it will affect our permanent staff. I don’t think it’s a huge concern. It’s yet to be decided about the single market. We’ll wait and see, and we’ll panic then if required.

What do you do in your spare time?

Family time, and I like to train and get to the gym. I’ve got a daughter, aged four, and my wife runs a tanning and beauty business and that’s doing very well. Her tanning business is like a good fresh produce business – it’s so busy, it’s a small business and it’s rammed. We don’t have much time in an evening with what she does and what I do. My daughter does pageants and competes nationally, so every weekend we’re doing that. We have no free time.

What drives you in your job?

I started work in fresh produce when I was 15 and I’ve done something different every year and every month, and kept on developing.