With all the uncertainty and negativity surrounding Brexit, it’s refreshing to hear about a company expanding its horizons and seizing the opportunity to export.
Kent-based Veg UK, which is celebrating its 30th year in business, has exported more in 2017 than ever before, sending nearly two-thirds of its crops overseas in the last couple of months. “This year, because the growing conditions have been very good on broccoli and cauliflower there’s a lot of availability of product, so the last two months we’ve been 60 per cent export,” explains director Julian Pitts. “It’s massive – we are doing a huge amount of trucks every week.”
The company has been sending to retailers and processors everywhere from Italy, Portugal and Scandinavia to the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Poland. And it might sound like selling tea to China, but it is even shipping broccoli to Spain, thanks to the more veg-based diet enjoyed by younger people in the Mediterranean country.
Exporting has been in Veg UK’s DNA since the early days, when it was sending Kentish cauliflower abroad. The company was founded by Pitts’ father Bill in September 1987, with Julian joining three months later as an apprentice (or “dogsbody”, as he affectionately describes it). His brother Martin came on board four years later, making it a real family business until Martin emigrated to Australia in 2006. Julian now owns and runs the business following his father’s retirement two years ago, having stepped back from day-to-day management a decade earlier.
Nowadays the company hopes to take what can be an uneven exporting gig to the next level, with more continuity of supply. “It’s up and down what you send,” he concedes. “We want, rather than it be like that, to get people to buy from the UK not just because there is no alternative, but to make it a regular thing.”
There’s an ulterior motive to exporting too – maintaining the delicate supply/demand balance. “It uplifts the prices,” Pitts explains. “If we are looking at putting 20 trucks of broccoli and cauliflower onto the wholesale markets it would be a disaster, as they can’t take the volume they used to. But that sometimes can be a downfall as you can export 20 trucks and demand in the UK tightens, and then what can happen is growers say ‘we don’t want to do exports’ [as prices rise] but you’ve got to keep feeding the export market rather than just do your home market.”
A fine balance then, but one where the long-term rewards could be bountiful, and Veg UK has its sights on further exploring the global stage, with pumpkins going to Dubai last week for example. For the UK to really capitalise on the opportunity though, Pitts feels it needs to raise itself up to a new level to support its high-quality produce offer. “We need to take on Europe, but we need to be better organised,” he says. “Packaging lets the UK down. The Dutch producers can put a pallet of produce anywhere and it looks like it’s factory made, whereas in the UK the philosophy has always been ‘we need cheaper packaging, try and save 5p a box’, but it arrives at the end customer and it costs us a quid for repacking. So we need to actually spend the money on the packaging, because the product is right.”
A major focus on Europe and beyond therefore, but that’s not to say the business’ eye isn’t still very much fixed on the domestic market too, and with a product mix that includes a full salad and babyleaf range, brassicas and pumpkins as well as carrots, beetroot, early potatoes, sweetcorn and artichokes, there’s plenty to get excited about. The UK customer base is oriented towards wholesale and catering, processors for the ready meal business, foodservice as well as supplying retailers and the Irish market.
It’s all about the quality of the crops, of course, and the company works with some of the best-known growers in the business, including the leading salad grower in Kent and the largest Pumpkin grower in Europe. That gives Pitts confidence that the company can expand its client base, as well as sell more to existing customers.
It’s an upbeat story, and one that belies the struggles of the Kent brassica trade of late. Leading cauliflower grower Robert Montgomery famously quit several years ago, claiming production in the county was no longer viable, and the number of growers has dropped from 15 to five thanks to cost and pricing pressure. “They’ve come out of it and these next 18 months I could see there being no cauliflower grown in Kent,” Pitts says. “Because we grow them through the winter we have to grow them with different spacing. They traditionally grow them [in Lincolnshire] very close together and grow them for the 8s market, whereas we grow a lot wider to allow them to grow more leaf to protect them from snow and frost. People are pulling out altogether in Kent – some have had opportunity to grow maize for a local biodigester, but there’s also a lot of diversification as a lot of houses have been put up in Thanet.”
A cocktail of issues from an ageing grower base to constantly low prices, increasing production costs and labour issues is the challenge for the Kent veg industry, and in the short term, at least, better returns would seem to be the key to ensuring production continues.
As for Veg UK, the focus is on exploring the new opportunities presented by the revaluation of sterling, and putting the shine back on the British flag in the international marketplace. In that sphere, the company would appear to be something of a trailblazer.
Birthday celebrations
Julian Pitts and the Veg UK team celebrated the company’s 30th anniversary with a meal at the top of The Shard, followed by a trip to the London Bridge Experience.
It’s part of what Pitts says is the philosophy of working hard but also having fun, and he admits a fondness for “extreme” activities, with the team also having completed the Nuts Challenge course. There have also been rugby trips and a golf competition for customers and growers. “I’ve got a good team and I’ve worked with some great people over the years,” Pitts says. “I’m proud of what they’re doing. It’s like a big family.”
