Waitrose hit by lack of local produce

SECURING reliable supplies of quality produce is the biggest challenge facing supermarket chain Waitrose, the group's agricultural manager Duncan Sinclair has revealed.

Waitrose accounts for 4 per cent of the annual food spend in the UK but has ambitions to double that in the next decade.

Speaking at a conference in Edinburgh on the role of partnership working in the food industry, Sinclair expressed concern about the fall in livestock numbers across the UK.

He said: "Dairy cow numbers have dropped by one million cows in the past 20 years.

"Beef cattle may have seen an increase in the mid-1990s but numbers have slipped away in recent years. The sheep industry is in decline and the pig sector has halved in the past decade.

"All of this makes it more difficult to ensure future supplies especially when we want to expand."

Expansion so far has been with existing producers but Sinclair doubted whether this preferred route could cope with Waitrose's ambitions.

He instanced the success of one small grouping of three Borders beef farmers who started to supply organic eggs to the company in 2006. Since then Cackleberry Eggs has seen its output rise to the point where it now supplies 42,000 dozen eggs.

Sinclair described the integration of the supply chain for poultry, pig and dairy produce as being "light years ahead" of the beef and lamb sector where, in his view, very little progress had been made in ensuring improved genetics came through to the final product.

He believed the UK still had a lot to learn from New Zealand where he claimed there was far more co-operation between the various components in livestock production.

"They work with bespoke genetics, and link this in to teams of vets looking at animal health and husbandry, whereas in this country there is far more separation," he said.

Waitrose, he revealed, had established a working group to try to pull together the various parts of the sheep and beef sectors to increase their effectiveness and efficiency.

Another buyer at the conference, David Sands, who heads up a family grocery business that has more than 20 shops across Fife and Perthshire, said he wanted to buy more locally produced food but had encountered problems.

Sands said: "Local vegetable and potato processors all seem to be contracted to the major retailers and they do not want to supply local retailers. It seems strange that in the area we work, there are large acreages of potatoes and vegetables being grown and yet they are difficult to access."

Sinclair said he had experienced the same problem in trying to source Scottish root crops and vegetables for Waitrose stores.

Delegates also heard Richard Lochhead, the rural affairs minister, reaffirm the government commitment to enhancing Scotland's reputation as a land of food and drink as well as raising the value of the industry to 12.5billion by 2017, from 7.5bn.