Local businessman and entrepreneur Angus Wilson, who grew up on a family farm in the Armagh village of Richhill, opted for a personal name choice when establishing a company to exploit the county’s natural resources of potatoes, vegetables and fruit. He called it Wilson’s Country. And today, 20 years later, it has blossomed into one of the major players in the sector, with a staff of 150 and an annual turnover estimated at around £13 million.
From a six-acre facility at Carn, on the outskirts of Craigavon, which houses its potato packing, vegetable and fresh fruit business, the company supplies caterers, food processors and retail multiples in both parts of Ireland. In addition to the traditional range of prepared fruit, vegetables and potatoes - including branded and own-label products for the multiples - a Countryfresh division now offers a speciality range, from diced onion and turnip to chateau potatoes and fruit salads, delivered in bulk packs or portion control bags.
High-profile customers include Tesco, Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, Dunnes Stores, the Musgrave Group and Spar, as well as the Hilton and Hastings Hotels, the Kerry Group, Avondale Foods and Moy Park.
Two years ago, Wilson’s Country acquired the six-acre Craigavon site to consolidate its operations. Since then, over £7m has been spent modernising the facility, an investment that, according to Mr Wilson, “will help secure the future of the business on all fronts”.
The company’s mission statement, posted on its website, owes nothing to the sophisticates of business school. In simple language, specific pledges are offered to customers, staff and suppliers, and the local community, The company promises to:
• Delight our customers in every respect.
• Develop and fairly reward our staff and suppliers.
• Deliver a safe product in harmony with the environment.
So far the customers appear happy, with Tesco shoppers voting the company’s potatoes their favourite product in a recent poll, while the company has also won special recognition for its ‘investor in people’ approach to staff. According to Wilson, speaking at the Craigavon site acquisition, “investment in bricks and mortar is one thing, but without people a business has no future. We have always placed staff and personnel training at the top of our priority list”.
Another key factor in the group’s success is the high degree of quality control exercised both in-house and at crop level. Potato supplies are grown on contract by what are termed “reliable” growers, those who can be depended on to produce the quality demanded both by Wilson’s Country and its supermarket customers.
The type of soil is also a factor, with the bulk of growers from Armagh, Antrim, Down and Derry, and some from across the border in county Meath, in the Irish Republic. As an added quality assurance, the company says it provides “a high level of investment in agronomy advice to growers”.
While others in the sector have struggled to survive, business has boomed at Wilson’s Country over the last eight years, with the company quadrupling in size. The influx of UK multiples into Northern Ireland - Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Safeway, whose 12 Northern stores have now been bought by Asda - offered new market opportunities that the company was quick to exploit, and business has grown in recent years by a remarkable 10 per cent per annum.
But it wasn’t just the company that benefited - so too did Northern Irish growers. “The success of Wilson’s Country has been very important for our members,” says a spokesman for the Ulster Farmers’ Union. “The company opened up a market route for produce that wasn’t there before and the whole industry has gained as a result.
“Of course, we’re always pressing for better prices for growers, though they are largely dictated by the multiples. But Wilson’s Country does its business in a very professional way and its concentration on the supermarket sector has opened up a lot of new opportunities.”
Angus Wilson has come a long way from that Richhill family farm. He is now a board member of the Northern Ireland Food & Drink Association (NIFDA) and company chairman of Micro Computer Solutions in Craigavon. This year, in the New Year’s Honours List, he was awarded an MBE for services to food processing and for his charity work.
But he remains very much a hands-on chairman of the company he founded two decades ago and maintains that “convenience, taste and healthy eating” hold the key to the company’s future. Managing director Lewis Cunningham is currently overseeing the installation of a new software system that will streamline the company’s day-to-day operations and, if calculations are correct, achieve an annual saving of up to £100,000 a year.
But it’s not all hi-tech number crunching at Wilson’s Country. Occasionally the company lets its corporate hair down, as when it organised a ‘Spuds in Verse’ schools competition. Some 300 children, all aged under 11, took part, with one of the winners a local boy, David Kenny, from Mullavilly Primary School in Tandragee, which is just down the road from the company headquarters.
His composition, which won him a pocket PC worth £500, could well be adopted as a theme song by the company and its growers. It reads:
They never go out of fashion,
They’re everyone’s daily passion:
When gathered and de-soiled,
Washed, peeled and then boiled,
Potatoes are really s-mash-ing!
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