While cauliflower growers across the country are lamenting a downturn in profits, thanks in part to the UK’s pre-Christmas chill, the mood at Southern England Farms (SEF) is anything but frosty.
Producing cauliflower, cabbage, greens and other brassica, SEF have just bagged a lucrative contract with retail giant Tesco to become a primary supplier - a commendable achievement as SEF began life as a small-time operation run by Greville Richards. Starting out trading brassica from his house, 10-years on Richards’ company is now the UK’s largest independent cauliflower grower and has an annual turnover of around £18 million.
Quite a success story considering the tough climate the industry faces today and Richards says he is proud: “The contract shows brilliant support from Tesco. Everyone always hears the bad news stories and you never hear any good ones - and this is it.”
Tesco’s commitment is a refreshing example of a supermarket supporting UK growers. Opinion polls from market research authorities have begun to show that consumers are becoming increasingly interested in buying local and seasonal food, and it seems at least one retailer is getting behind this - a trend that the industry might see developing over the next few years. But for the meantime, Richards, a Cornishman born and bred, says he is pleased that local farming will receive a much-desired boost. “This just goes to show the amount of investment they are putting in to Cornish agriculture,” he says. “It will mean better volumes for us because we are speaking to Tesco directly and it gives local growers more confidence to keep on growing - we’re finally returning prices to growers that they are actually happy with.”
While the contract is now the company’s major focus in terms of volume, it is just one indicator of the company’s success. SEF has been supplying directly to Morrisons for over a year and also supplies a number of third party packers as well. In order to do this, it grows 4,000 acres in its own right plus a further 3,000a grown by 40 local farmers, with sites ranged across the county. With summer and winter cropping, SEF is currently growing 80 per cent of the fresh produce it markets and is in the process of building a £2m packhouse on a 55,000sq ft site to accommodate the new business. “The pack house will give us far greater flexibility come winter when cauliflower is in such high demand,” says Alasdair MacLennan, SEF’s recently appointed technical director. “It gives us the capacity to grow business because at the moment there’s hardly any room to move around at peak times.”
And grow is what SEF appear to be doing very well. Figures show the company has increased its total acreage by 50 per cent year-on-year, and this expansion looks set to continue.
SEF rents land from farmers pushed out by the unforgiving dairy industry and left sitting on expanses of unproductive land. Richards says he hopes to be operating on around 12,000 acres within the next three years. With ambitions to takeover such a large amount of the Cornish countryside, preservationists might be concerned that the landscape will be turned into a plastic jungle, reminiscent of some parts of southern Spain, but MacLennan says SEF is extremely sensitive about its surroundings.
“There has been a phenomenal amount of growth here over the last three or four years and we’ve got quite a responsibility being the largest farmer in Cornwall. We have miles of ancient Cornish hedgerows and lanes, and that is a responsibility we take very seriously,” he says.
The company supports this commitment with participation in several voluntary initiatives and is a member of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) and Linking Environment and Farming (LEAF).
With so many fingers in so many pies, it is hard to believe that Richards was managing the business with help only from his wife Jane just four months ago. MacLennan, a former technologist at Sainsbury’s, was taken on, along with Jon Bellamy from Premier Foods, to complement the business’s expansion. But even now the management team seems a relatively modest force. “We run a pretty lean operation down here,” MacLennan observes. “We are as efficient as we possibly can be. We are all quite young and there is very little staff turnover - some of the managers here came straight from school.”
Looking after employees is undoubtedly an integral part of running a business, and one that SEF seems to understand. With the food industry exasperated at the proposal to water down the gangmaster legislation, potentially leaving out many vulnerable groups of workers, it is comforting to see a business that has a radically different approach to employing a foreign workforce: “We have a number of eastern European employees working for us. Some of them have shown their worth and been promoted to management positions,” MacLennan explains. “In Cornwall we don’t have the luxury of an abundant amount of labour but the Lithuanians who work here do a very good job for us and we want to keep them.”
The perks certainly look good - along with accommodation, the company has built a mini-football pitch and basketball court for workers to use.
But people management is not the only area where the company is trying to do things a bit differently. The company’s long-term game plan involves extending product seasons so that its customers can procure locally grown crops all year round. So far, SEF offers cauliflower, spring greens and green cabbage to its customers for 12 months of the year, and it has also significantly extended the seasons of its more peripheral crops: Savoy cabbage, pointed cabbage, courgette, and broccoli - the latter two crops a relatively new venture for the farm. It is managing to do this in a variety of ways. Despite its sites existing in their entirety within the Cornish borders, the different plots allow SEF a more flexible growing program. The company also works closely with a number of seed houses and trials different varieties before selecting crops to try and achieve a seamless supply. A great example of this is its 65 cauliflower varieties grown. Once a variety is selected and planted, techniques such as using polythene covering to bring crops on and over-wintering is deployed to try and increase availability.
Over 1,000 acres of polythene is programmed for new season crops this year in SEF’s bid to meet the challenge, giving the UK consumer Cornish grown produce up to six weeks earlier than previously seen on shelf. Pointed cabbage for mid-April and broccoli and Savoy cabbage for mid-May will all be available.
A further example of pushing back the boundaries can be found in Germany where a new export contract means SEF will be growing over 5,500 acres of winter cauliflower. The company says this new development will allow it to prioritise and better serve its customers.
One way SEF feels it has an advantage over other brassica growers is more obvious - the company’s location. Cornwall has a mild year-round climate and plenty of rain to keep crops well watered. “We don’t get the extremes,” MacLennan explains. “It’s not overly hot in the summer, or cold in the winter, which means crops suffer less stress and continue to grow. This means we can give the consumer exactly what they want, all year round.”
Mild conditions have also helped cushion some of the blow from the UK’s recent frosts, which have affected growers all over the country. However, MacLennan concedes that they did have to bring in some Breton crop to make up supply on cauliflowers. “The frost was hard but everyone’s in the same boat. It’s been a very challenging winter. We don’t usually get these sorts of temperatures down here, but we’ve found that we’ve been better off than most growers because we’ve got a spread of crops all across Cornwall,” he adds.
MacLennan says SEF’s approach means a win-win situation for everybody, extending seasons can ensure that the supply chain is shortened and customers get better vegetables: “It’s something we are pushing the boundaries of every year. An increased UK season means a fresher product, less food miles and less cost,” he says.
Richards says he is sure this strategy will continue to pay dividends and says he has every intention the SEF growing empire will become a dominant force in the industry: “I am very pleased with the way the business has grown so far,” he says. “Our vision is to build upon our knowledge and expertise to be the biggest, the best and the most efficient brassica supplier around.”
