Our 66th Annual Dinner was a resounding success, with a capacity crowd at the Savoy celebrating the Chinese New Year in style with outstanding entertainment performances. Specially designed cocktails, a great menu and surprisingly good Chinese wine together with an outstanding speech from the Chinese ambassador, HE Liu Xiaoming, meant the event was heralded as among the finest in its history. Judging by the feedback I would advise booking early for 2013 to make sure you’re not disappointed - February 2nd is the date. As always we thank our sponsors, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Imp & Exp of Foodstuffs, Native Produce & Animal By-Products, represented at the dinner by vice president Mme Yu Lu, who has become a good friend of the FPC. We are working on the programme for our trip to China in June, so if you trade with China or would like to, look out for the details published soon.

We were devastated to learn of the sudden demise of our UK sponsor and friend, Anglia’s David Hurley, just 10 days prior to the dinner - a great blow to the industry, and he will be greatly missed. It was lovely to see Rob Frost, Sarah Neale and the Anglia team at the event and I have no doubt that the business is in safe hands and will continue to succeed and grow in Rob’s capable hands.

Our HR group continues to grow and we were delighted to see so many at the winter forum, with a number of new members. These popular forums provide a great opportunity for industry HR individuals to get together and discuss generic topics and issues in our sector. Look out for the spring date and join the group at our office in Peterborough.

Our annual January visit saw us alight in Bristol early one morning just before the snow, with a large group of members and a packed programme starting at the Bristol Wholesale Fruit Centre. Richard Laurence provided an excellent market update and despite sub-zero temperatures, it was great to look around and meet up with Nick Matthews and the Bristol Fruit Sales team, as well as other tenants including David Foster of the impressive French Garden. Bristol is another of our great regional markets, servicing a vast area across the south west and into the Midlands.

Bristol Port was our next stop, where Jonathan Mordaunt and the team at The Bristol Port Company provided great hospitality and an excellent guided tour of the port. They took over the port in 1991, making monumental changes to create a state-of-the-art operation with outstanding facilities. Following a superb lunch we hopped back on the coach and headed to the nearby Tesco Distribution Centre and another extremely interesting guided tour.

Networking is definitely where it’s at in 2012 and we started as we mean to continue, building relationships, making meaningful introductions and providing trading opportunities. -

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