I do appreciate that many business reports keep saying that we are living in the most rapidly changing times ever.  We all keep saying it because it is simply true and the past year has, of course, proved to be no exception to this trend.

Last year at this time, we were all naturally concerned with Jamie Oliver’s poorly balanced and hyped-up TV series about school dinners.  Who would have thought that the effect of this programme would have been so negative in the short-term resulting in the take-up of school dinners by pupils down by an average 10% across the country.

Who would have thought that Tony Blair would have given his final speech at a Labour Party Conference and who would have thought that Unilever would no longer own Birds Eye and their iconic brand, originated in the 1930’s. 

We have also seen a more positive leadership of the Conservative Party from David Cameron.  His focus on ‘green issues’ and the environment has led to a political contest as to who can be ‘greener than green’.  This has led to David Miliband succeeding Margaret Beckett as the Secretary of State at Defra, with an even more intensive environmental strategy, which will undoubtedly quickly impact on the food industry and inevitably the frozen food sector.

That’s change indeed. And that change will certainly have an effect on the frozen food industry and BFFF, now and into the future.

However, not all of business life is made up of surprises or issues out of the blue.  Some time ago, Alf came to see me to discuss plans for a professional succession when he steps down from his role as Director-General.  We discussed this with the Executive Council and set in place a recruitment programme for a Director-General Designate to understudy Alf to ensure that the ever-increasing issues facing the frozen food industry would be countenanced by a well-trained and highly capable successor. 

This very intense programme, over a period of time, has now been completed and we are pleased to welcome Brian Young, the former Managing Director of Tryton Foods Ltd. as Director-General Designate and Alf’s successor.

Brian is now in place and will succeed Alf in April of next year.  We are confident that the members will find that the Federation continues its strong provision of service and information to the membership and effectively carries out its broader work on behalf of the industry with Government, opinion-formers, consumers and in the trade itself   

COUNTERING THE MYTHS

Over recent years, it has been become all too fashionable for both the trade press and the national media to deride retail frozen foods as simply cheap and cheerful and lacking in both flair and nutritional value.  Strangely enough, frozen products destined for the foodservice market have no such problems currently from chefs and menu developers. 

In retail, even our good friends in the trade press whose relationship we value greatly can be inclined to be negative about retail frozen foods.  Sometimes articles, which actually praise our industry and report accurately, can still be inclined to throw in negative headlines.

We felt that it is simply no good bemoaning our fate and whinging that our industry has been mis-represented or criticised, even though some of the criticism may not be factually based.    We had to do something and that meant having input into what the journalists were writing by providing accurate and up to date information that would result in the right story.  By working with Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), we are now able to produce a quarterly report providing accurate statistics to the trade press along with an overview of the performance of the various retail categories in frozen foods. 

Already, we have been able to redress any mis-perceptions that the volume in the retail frozen food market is shrinking.  It has, say TNS, absolutely stabilised year on year with the tonnage sold exactly the same as last year.  We have also been able to demonstrate that the much-maligned frozen desserts sector has grown in value by 7% and in volume by 9% year on year.  We have also been able to make it clear that this is due to far better quality being offered and far less BOGOFs and discounts being undertaken.   It is all positive stuff.

BFFF contributions to various recent trade media reports of frozen food have made their outcomes much more positive than has been the case previously.  As well as producing a quarterly report in the Bulletin, we will also publish an electronic, quarterly “Journalists Guide to Frozen Foods” for the trade and consumer media to make sure that the frozen category becomes better understood and much more difficult to denigrate.  Hopefully, we will rehabilitate frozen foods in the hearts and minds of opinion-formers and throughout the media as the quality and appeal of frozen products increases.   The more the industry can be proud of its products, the more we can do to convince consumers to come back to the frozen cabinet.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE

BFFF’s political influence, which is so important in a modern business environment, continues to grow.  Our relationship with Defra is close and we have effected an excellent rapport with the new Head of Food and Drink Industry Division, David Jones, who has succeeded Callton Young, who gave BFFF and the frozen food industry such great support in his time. 

David is the senior civil servant overseeing the Defra Food Industry Sustainability Strategy programme and he has been responsible for the setting up of the Defra ‘Champions Groups’ for energy, waste reduction, transportation and food miles plus ethical trading.  Due to our standing with Defra, BFFF is represented by an industry expert on each of these groups.  Apart from developing the necessary policies for sustainable food into the future, they will be able to ensure that the targets are practical for our industry to achieve and are free of much of the impractical wishes of ill-informed commentators and pundits which we hear so often.  We are very grateful to those people working in these groups for us.

On a broader basis, we have been in the forefront of negotiations in both London with Defra and with the EU in Brussels, to seek to counter the proposed imposition of a quota system for raw and cooked poultry meat and poultry products from countries outside the EU, particularly Brazil and Thailand.  It would seem that the EU proposal, through the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is designed to protect EU poultry producers.  The facts are, though, that these producers are not able to manufacture suitably alternative products in volume.  The products involved include ingredients for ready meals and finished products such as party foods.  Restrictions would bring severe commercial hardship to a surprisingly wide-range of our members.

We are hoping to be able to provide the negotiating parties with detailed industry information, provided by our specialist members and we hope to effect sufficiently high quotas which mean that our importers and their customers will not have to suffer very high duties on tonnage above an artificially low quota base.

It is a sign of our influence that David Jones of Defra will be a Top Table guest at our Annual Luncheon, as will John Harwood, the Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency (FSA),  Jenny Morris, Policy Officer for Food at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and Brian Revell, National Organiser of Food and Agriculture at the Transport and General Workers Union, amongst others. 

RETAIL MARKET PLACE

You will all be aware that for some years I have been an advocate of the retail side of our industry moving away from the “cheap and cheerful” image of frozen foods.  I have always been of the opinion and have always stated publicly that BFFF felt that deep discounting and too many BOGOFs were undermining the image of frozen foods in the eye of the consumer.  I know that this has not always made me popular with some of the retailers. 

Nevertheless, I am absolutely delighted to be able to congratulate every retailer for seriously engaging in their individual activities to move a significant volume of their frozen food business away from a down market image and still further away from the BOGOFs of recent years.  It is great to see the work which each retailer has undertaken in their own way, taking the whole category upmarket. 

Frozen foods have such versatility that there is a place for them in the bargain basements of the multiples freezer cabinets.  However, it is also true that an improvement in quality and a higher level of pricing will attract back the more aspirational shoppers who are needed if we are to break new ground in frozen foods and this is now happening.

It is also good to see TNS report that retail frozen food volumes are stabilising on a year by year basis and the industry’s share no longer slipping away.  There are so many new positive factors now in place that were not there even a year ago which represent a great springboard for growth into higher quality frozen foods at prices to which aspirational buyers can relate.  We can now all, once again, be confident ambassadors for frozen foods in the retail cabinet.

Despite the industry colour coding regime originated by Tesco and promoted by BFFF, research still seems to show that there are far too many retail stores out of stock on many important frozen food lines, particularly on Saturday and Sunday.  It had been considered that this problem had been overcome but the research really is making it clear that the remedy has been far from universal. 

We have a group working on this issue to seek to ascertain exactly what level of shortfall is being caused by this deficiency of stock and we hope to report back soon.  It is ironic that an industry with a static volume would only have to increase its availability throughout the UK by between 3% and 4% to actually outperform the growth of the general grocery market.

FOODSERVICE MARKET PLACE

Frozen foods continue to grow in the foodservice outlets in both the cost and profit sectors.  It is very important with so much negative comment about frozen foods in the media, for our industry to ensure we avoid the misperceptions held by some members of the public about frozen foods to not spill over into the foodservice area.  The frozen foods produced for foodservice are actually of superb value, as witnessed by the winners of the BFFF Annual Awards in that sector.

We have a group of dedicated foodservice specialists from both our wholesale and producer sectors working closely together to devise a programme of promotion directly to the catering end users to ensure that they are in no doubt that the frozen food industry can provide the solutions to their recipe requirements and to their profitability.  We have already seriously extended our database of catering end user contacts to make sure that we are able to deliver the positive messages about frozen foods and their place in that sector.

Though less pronounced than in the retail sector, there is a great deal of room for increased efficiency in ensuring that there is a higher level of availability in the foodservice sector.  The foodservice supply chain is very complex by its nature and we have brought together specialists from both the wholesale and supplier sides of our industry to solve the problems of shortages at the point of order capture and also to look at the efficiency and communications with regard to the deliveries into wholesale depots.

COMMERCIAL & UNIFYING ACTIVITIES

As reported in my interim report, we achieved the highest level of entries ever for the BFFF Annual Awards which is a truly outstanding achievement.  This underlines just how prestigious the awards are and how well supported the BFFF are by its members.  The commercial team have done a wonderful job in pulling it all together and our thanks go to Lynn Thomas and her team for providing an extremely professional event and showcase for our industry.  This event and the Awards Scheme itself continues to grow in stature and the commercial team, led by Lynn, can be very proud of this achievement.

The Gala Dinner Dance was a wonderful networking and unifying occasion for our industry and the winning products in the retail sector belie the negative perception of more aspirational consumers influenced by some cheap and cheerful products of yesteryear.

The excellent profits from our commercial activities provide a significant contribution to the funding of BFFF and without it the Federation would not be as effective as it is.  As ever, I give my warmest thanks to Lynn Thomas, Head of the Commercial Team at BFFF, for never resting on her laurels and continuing to push forward the quality of all our activities, events and publications which need such creativity, detailed planning and cost-effectiveness to work as well as they do.

We are once again highly involved with the frozen food sector at the IFE07 show and we look forward to welcoming representatives of all our member companies at ExCeL in London Docklands at the end of March 2007.

TECHNICAL & LEGISLATIVE SERVICES

BFFF continues to be at the forefront of the provision of technical and legislative information to the members via the T&L Update and via Ian Farley’s ability to relate on a “one to one” basis with the members who have problems.  The Technical and Legislative Committee grows in strength and we are grateful that such well qualified technical executives provide so much input to BFFF under Vince Craig’s astute and considered Chairmanship.

Regarding Sudan 1, I am still at a loss as to understand how a recall which was felt necessary by the FSA and costing £120 million, could result in the perpetrators of the issue failing to be prosecuted.  In my simple terms, if it really was an issue – then there was a need for a prosecution.  If it was not an issue – there was no need for the recall. 

With our additional resource we have been able to set up professional advice in Health and Safety matters, which is so important to the corporate responsibility aspirations of the members with a specialist area on our website.

INDUSTRY INPUT

The calibre of the BFFF team and the BFFF Committees continues to grow.  We are working to the modern trade association model of having few standing Committees but forming time-limited working groups where industry specialists tackle our industry’s issues alongside the member’s professional BFFF team. 

I am very flattered and very grateful to that mixture of youth and experience which has come forward to support me by taking places on the Committees and on the sub groups and I take the opportunity to salute you and also the members of the BFFF team.  I believe that we have done some valuable work in the last three years.