This has been an interesting year for Nationwide Produce – “good, but challenging”, as MD Tim O’Malley puts it – with deflation hitting the business as low prices hit home. Yet the last few months have seen an improvement in fortunes, and the potato and veg specialist is expecting to report an increase in turnover and volume in its next set of accounts.
Its most eye-catching development has been the recently-announced joint venture with QV Foods to market onions, a move which makes use of the £3 million production facility built by Nationwide at Long Sutton last year. The new venture will be known as Anglia Growing Partnership.
Nationwide has also been investing in its own packhouse and cold storage facility near Rotterdam, where it has moved into a large warehouse with six loading docks and four cold stores on one of the Netherlands’ largest fresh produce industrial estates.
The Dutch business, Vitaal Europe, accounts for around a quarter of group turnover, and O’Malley sees the international market as a key area for future growth. “Last year our non-UK sales were just short of £20m. We refer to it as ‘non-UK’ rather than ‘export’ because a large proportion of this is, for example, Dutch produce to Finland or Spanish produce to Germany,” he says.
O’Malley explains that the company’s growth over the years has involved starting new businesses and developing them. If we go by recent events, that is very much set to continue.
