A Birmingham wholesaler is expanding with the opening of a brand new salads firm on the city’s Pershore Street horticultural market. George Perry opened GP Salads Ltd on December 15 taking advantage of a new business opportunity and another firm’s closure. Director Mark Tate explained: “About 80 per cent of our customer base is Asian and we were already supplying them with basic salad lines, but we wanted to target the top-end traditional English retail and catering sectors too. We saw an opportunity when Haluco closed on the market and we bought the lease on their units from Total Produce. We also had Phil Wheeler and Barrie Brooks from Mack wanting to set up something on their own so it all just opened up at the right time.”
Tate, his brother Paul and Moss Prottey are all directors of George Perry (Wholesale Fruit & Veg Merchants) Ltd and the three have a 50:50 arrangement in GP Salads with Wheeler and Brooks. Tate calculates that the full start up costs of the new salads business are some £200,000 including a full refurbishment and new cold storage on the Haluco pitch.
The new development makes the George Perry set up the largest independent firm trading on Birmingham market. It is also estimated to be the oldest fresh produce wholesaler to trade continuously in the UK since its foundation in 1870.
Tate is extremely bullish for the coming year. He said: “So much talk of doom and gloom in the economy is bringing more of a panic to the marketplace. What we are seeing now is that shoppers are going to the retail markets to have more of a shop around as people are tightening their belts. They are not just going to the supermarket and buying everything all in one place. There are loads of traders offering different lines at £1-a-bowl. We serve a lot of them on the market here and they all pay cash: it’s a seller and you have to go with it.”
