Examination of witnesses (Questions 100
- 112)
WEDNESDAY 3 MAY 2000
MR GORDON
SUMMERFIELD and MR
DAVID MCNAIR
100. That leads me to one of my other final
points, you talk about regional taste groups, they are all tuppence
ha'penny organisations, are they not? They are about 0.00 per
cent of food businesses. They always struck me as being very picturesque,
they never struck me as having much to do with business.
(Mr McNair) They are small organisations. They reflect
the richness and diversity of food in this country, which is often
under-appreciated. A number of them have proven, over time, to
be the acorns, if you like, of much bigger organisations going
forward.
101. That reply slightly bothers me because
that substantiates the fact that they look rather picturesque,
they turn up at county shows and sell ice-cream.
(Mr Summerfield) If I dare, you are perhaps being
provocative. I think they are important organisations.
102. They sound like focus groups.
(Mr Summerfield) They are support organisations and
there are a lot of people employed in them. We should not go away
with the fact they are tuppence ha'penny organisations, they employ
a lot of people.
103. In what sense?
(Mr Summerfield) In the manufacturer of the small
product sectors you would see a very diverse range. There are
something in excess of 50,000 people involved in food manufacture
through these very small organisations, that is not an insubstantial
number of jobs.
104. You think as organisations they are interlocutors
which are efficient, are they?
(Mr Summerfield) To put that to one side, let us just
see what sort of growth they have. They have grown from three
billion of turnover in food to something like 3.6 billion in four
years. They are small businesses and a lot of them growing. There
will be some of them who will disappear.
105. That is true of all small businesses.
(Mr Summerfield) Yes. I think it is a very important
sector.
106. Maybe we could find a better name for them,
it sounds a bit like a gastronomic focus group.
(Mr Summerfield) That is our generic in-house term,
we would talk about Taste of the West or Yorkshire Pantry as being
organisations.
107. It has a cottagey feel about it all.
(Mr Summerfield) There is an element of that.
(Mr McNair) The Scotch whisky industry at one stage
was a cottage industry in the highlands of Scotland, as was the
shortbread industry. If you recall the example I gave with shortbread
that was seen as a very small speciality area. It has grown to
become a major biscuit line in supermarkets throughout the world.
It is no longer just a tartan, hills, and glens.
108. Mr Summerfield, the answer you have been
nurturing.
(Mr Summerfield) You were asking questions and I just
think about the overall activity of us, the small businesses and
the regional groups. I think they are fundamental to the overall
activity of Food from Britain. We see a number of opportunities,
as indeed do the overseas directors of small companies with specialist
products been able to get them into the market as they have into
the domestic market. I think it is an important matter we should
not lose off the radar screen.
109. My previous question was, looking at your
competitive organisations, the club of export promoters, you said
you thought about that response. Given peer group pressures and
the views of value-for-money, what do you think, are there any
lessons to be learned about the way you go about it?
(Mr Summerfield) Yes, I think there are. One of them
would be for me to say, "Why is it that they believe they
can have an activity in a specific market when we have looked
at it and do not think we can." The best example of that
is South America, where we set up to go to South America with
a number of United Kingdom manufacturers only to find that there
was such a limited interest, almost zero interest, and other people
have managed to prospect those markets and develop very, very
strong representation.
110. If you were trying to promote/develop a
couple of lines of activity, as it were, on this basis—and
from what Mr McNair has said he would like to be able to promote
certain groups of products more effectively, families of products
rather that single products—you would like to find out how
some organisations appear to have cracked overseas market that
we do not have the key to yet, is that right?
(Mr Summerfield) Yes.
(Mr McNair) That comes back to the level of support
you need in establishing offices in new markets. All that ties
back to the point we were saying earlier, one of the keys things
that are on our "to do" list is very much about putting
exports further up the agenda of more British food and drink companies.
It is only in terms of making businesses at the highest level
appreciate the opportunities that are there that we will then
get the level of support in order to drive forward into some of
those new markets.
111. For my absolutely final question, which
is almost the first question I asked, the present climate must
be quite a difficult one to do this in, asking people to get into
export, when they look at the papers everyday and they see the
relationship between the pound and other currencies and they read
all the stories about people saying, "This is desperate,
we cannot survive", it must be jolly difficult getting people
to address themselves to this issue when all the mood music would
appear to be quite difficult.
(Mr Summerfield) It is extremely difficult but there
are still one or two successful organisations able to stand up
and say, "We are still improving our performance in spite
of the currency difference". From a Food from Britain perspective
it is not all of the markets. Europe is a very large part of our
export market, over 60 per cent, but the other 30-odd per cent
is still an important market where there is relative stability.
We are seeing good growth in the US market, 10 per cent growth
and 15 per cent in the Far East. They are important to nurture
and grow and continue to drive.
112. Thank you very much, indeed. You have had
two and a half hours, it has been extremely useful and we are
most grateful to you for coming to see us.
(Mr McNair) Thank you for your interest in us.
| 
