Premier Foods supplier row sparks Twitter storm

By Michael Stones

- Last updated on GMT

Premier Foods' demands for supplier investment has provoked a storm of hostile tweets
Premier Foods' demands for supplier investment has provoked a storm of hostile tweets

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Premier Foods’s demands that its suppliers invest in its business or face de-listing have unleashed a storm of protest on the social media networking site Twitter. Here we capture, in tweets, a flavour of the row.

Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield, said Premier Foods was acting like “food mafia”,​ while other commentators called for a boycott of the manufacturer’s products.

Food commentator Jay Rayner described Premier Foods’s demands for investment payments as “brutal” and said the firm came across as “a bunch of shysters”.

‘Mr Kipling takes exceedingly large bribes’

Displaying a little more humour, Bob Hawkins tweeted: “Mr Kipling takes exceedingly large bribes”.

Dan Crossley of the Food Ethics Council said the story revealed why Britain needed a Food Power Adjudicator.

The comments followed a BBC TV Newsnight​ investigation about the firm’s supplier investment strategy. One contributor said the manufacturer’s action was like having “a gun held to your head”.

But a Premier Foods spokeswoman told FoodManufacture.co.uk the company had done nothing wrong.

 

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2 comments

Premier Foods 'Blackmail'

Posted by National Flexible,

What a load of nonsense is being talked about Premier Foods desire to have supplier support for marketing campaigns. This type of ‘Supplier Partnership’ contribution is common in the food industry and is a great way for both companies to benefit from increased sales.

Some companies achieve this by escalating rebates, thus the more you sell, the more you payback, others use the Premier Foods approach.

It’s not blackmail, its commercial sense to choose suppliers who want to work as long term partners and invest together in sales growth over others who choose not to provide such support. It’s called Partnership and at National Flexible we value our partnership with Premier very highly.

At their recent Supplier Conference we attended, Premier Foods were very open about their future plans and what opportunities there were for supply partnerships. Most companies would not be as candid or inclusive as they were with the information provided.
National Flexible

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Premier Foods asked us for £10,000

Posted by Premier outrage,

work in Recruitment and assisted Premier Foods to recruit several Managers a few years ago. Procurement then took over and asked all recruitment companies to pay £10,0000 to allow them to support Premier Foods with recruitment!!

We took the decision not to pay the £10,000 and they never worked with us again.

We found the request to pay £10,0000 outrageous, as did a lot of other recruitment companies.

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