Jeffrey Hall, group managing director of Jamaica Producers Group Ltd (JPG), has spoken out about the decision to place its UK subsidiary Serious Food Ltd into administration earlier this year.

Hall was speaking as rumours circulate the UK trade that the scale of Serious’s debt to the UK fresh produce industry was threatening the survival of other companies.

He said: “Serious Food was placed into administration as a result of a range of economic conditions, including a downturn in volumes of premium juices and smoothies in the UK market, dramatic increases in the costs of raw materials and prices in UK supermarkets. I cannot offer any more constructive comment on the current position, as that is for the administrator, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).”

Serious Food, which also operated subsidiary Sunjuice, had been making operating losses for more than two years before parent company JPG decided to pull the plug at the end of January this year.

Rob Lewis, acting for PwC, said that his firm is still in discussions with a number of parties about maintaining parts of the Serious Food business as a going concern, but discussions about purchasing Sunjuice, the freshly squeezed element of the business, failed almost immediately. A total of 127 employees were made redundant, followed by a further 200 in February. However, 90 employees remain employed within the smoothie-making business at the company’s Welsh manufacturing plant, which Lewis still hopes to sell as a going concern.