There’s something unique - perhaps refreshing even - about the management of Natures Way Foods. Among the most senior executives at the company, half have been recruited from outside the fresh produce industry, with an unusually high proportion of women.
Susan Barratt epitomises the approach. The likeable chief executive, who has been in the role since April 2005, began her career as a chartered accountant at Coopers & Lybrand, moving on to Geest in various roles in the UK, US and Costa Rica. Her career then took her into the pub trade at Whitbread and then Eldridge Pope, where she became CEO, before finally moving to NWF.
Her diverse background is typical of senior staff at NWF. “I think it’s really refreshing to get new eyes who’ve come out of a different business into this one,” Barratt says. “You get a different perspective on things because you’ve had different experiences. It’s really useful to have some people that really know the detail and some who are coming in from a slightly different direction but understand how to do things in a slightly different way. That adds huge value to us as a business.”
And adding value - that’s to say profitable growth - is the name of the game for NWF over the coming years. Barratt has targeted ambitious 10-15 per cent growth for the £113 million-turnover business over the coming years, though she insists that will not be growth for growth’s sake. “Anyone can grow a business,” she points out. “There’s a saying: ‘Sales is vanity, profit is sanity’. The good businesses are the ones that do sustainable growth.”
A major plank of the strategy to achieve that is the £17m investment in a new facility at Runcton, Chichester. The 100,000sqft site, adjacent to the existing facility, is all about efficiency - “a nice square box with complete flows of stuff in and out”, as Barratt calls it - and will give the company opportunity to expand production of fruit, bowls and trays and leafy products.
For while NWF might be synonymous with leafy salad production, like its rivals at Florette the company sees real diversification opportunity within the convenience fruit segment. “We recognised the prepared [salad] market has become more mature - though there’s still growth in it - and wanted to go into a different marketplace, and fruit seemed like a great place to be,” Barratt explains. “In terms of our skill base, there’s some commonality from an operational point of view. There’s a slightly different approach from the supply base, but in terms of forecasting and managing that process and working with suppliers and building relationships, that’s the thing we’re really good at.”
NWF’s focus will be on cut and prepared lines - the most wholehead fruit it is offering is pineapple halves - but Barratt is excited by the possibility to differentiate through taste, variety, quality and so on.
Indeed there’s a raft of new product development going on at the company following the successful launch of the innovative Lasting Leaf brand. But Barratt is at pains to point out that doesn’t come at the expense of what she refers to as EDP - existing product development - which she says is every bit as vital as NPD. “You have to evolve products, as opposed to just change the world,” she says. “There’s some fantastic products out there that have had loyalty for a long time and are still selling incredibly well. That’s a Natures Way philosophy - we believe strongly in continuous improvement.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that Lasting Leaf’s early success might have given the company a taste for brands, but Barratt insists that is not the case. Instead, she reasons that with such major customers as Tesco and McDonald’s, “a proliferation of brands in our space would be completely wrong.” Why? “We want to put our best foot forward in terms of Lasting Leaf and make sure we never diminish the value in our categories of the own label stuff. It’s our bread and butter. And customers are more enthusiastic than ever [about pushing their own brands], and having been to their conferences that’s very much part of their current strategy.”
Certainly NWF has some of the biggest customers in the business, and perhaps crucially, these span a wide range of sectors. Any company that can count McDonald’s, Pret, Tesco, Morrisons, Waitrose, Northern Foods and more among its client base can lay claim to having a good spread of business, even if it does bring the requirement of understanding a very diverse selection of markets. Barratt places high emphasis on “delighting the customer”, though she adds that the relationship must be a two-way affair: “I do see it as very much our responsibility to make sure the markets that we’re in are in growth. And if they are that helps the customers and we all win. It’s a partnership. We’ve all got to win together.”
Growing the market is a key concern for the business, but Barratt isn’t convinced that generic industry marketing is necessarily the way forward. There’s been much discussion lately over the British Leafy Salads Association’s inability to raise £45,000 of industry cash to fund a promotional campaign, but Barratt has mixed feelings on the subject, admitting NWF hasn’t “felt obliged or the need to” be involved in generic promotion up until now. She also points out that such a campaign would benefit from being larger scale. “If you’re going to do it, do it big,” she says. “Everybody needs to agree it’s something you need to do. I’m not sure we’ve had that real clarity of views, so it’s not really taken off. That’s not to criticise the people who have tried. I think good luck to them for having put the effort in, and maybe I feel slightly guilty that we haven’t, but I haven’t seen the need for it, which is why we haven’t really joined in. My view might change.”
For now, Barratt is happy with where the business is, with its site investment and strong growth in key lines. The economy may have had some effect on the market, but she is comfortable that with a customer spread across the food spectrum there is little reason to doubt the double digit growth aspiration can be achieved.
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