Justin King, speaking at the NFU conference in Birmingham this week, said: “We are more than happy to hear from suppliers when they have a complaint. When it is brought to our attention that we’ve done something wrong then we put it right.”
King also welcomed the NFU’s proposal for a ‘Responsibility Index’ to measure UK retailers, adding that Sainsbury’s would be happy to be the first to be measured by the index and have the results published.
Elsewhere King talked up the firm’s support of UK produce, and defended its right to source from outside the country out of season: “It would be commercial suicide not to sell strawberries 52 weeks a year,” he said. “So if we have to buy from Israel in December we will. But we do support British strawberries in season.”
King used strawberries as an example to demonstrate the contradictory behaviour of consumers, whereby it is often the same consumers who want to buy British produce in season that also complain about polytunnels in the countryside.
He also praised his firm’s efforts in working closely with growers, explaining that the retailer had multiplied its supplies of asparagus fourfold in 2005, a development which led to the widening of the UK season in 2006 as a result. And in the first four weeks of this season Sainsbury’s sold more British apples than all the other supermarkets put together, he added.
In other developments, King said that the supermarket is planning to extend its Farm Promise scheme to organic top fruit later this summer, while the firm has also set up 12 ‘regional champions’ who will work in the retailer’s trading teams and will have responsibility for developing the regional sourcing programme through road shows.
No comments yet