Bramley fortunes
Phil Acock, md and chairman, Fourayes
Fourayes being a family business meant that there was always a potential place for me to come into the company, although I was never pressured. I worked here during school holidays, but that was just to earn money! My education wasn't food related at all. I studied production engineering and spent some time in the US at an engineering company before coming back here and working for my Dad's cold storage business in Sittingbourne.
It was small fry - turning over about £60,000 or £70,000, but given that it was pretty much a one man operation, I was thrown in right at the deep end. I did everything from operating a forklift unloading lorries to managing the finances, drawing up maintenance contracts and generating sales. I was only in my early twenties, so it was very challenging, but great fun!
I started running Fourayes - which supplies apple products, mincemeat, fruit fillings, and dessert and cake toppings to major manufacturers - about 11 years ago. Since then there's been an enormous amount of change, partly because the industry we supply into has seen a hell of a lot of rationalisation. The only way to survive as a supplier in this environment is to work closely with your customers and offer them a broader product range and a superior service so they don't need to go to anyone else.
To do this, we've really expanded the range from chilled fresh diced and sliced short shelf-life apples and cold mixes, to longer shelf-life hot mix fillings with other fruits in all sorts of different packaging configurations. This year we're looking at producing about 13,000t of fruit products using raw materials such as sugars, starches, frozen fruits, 9,500t of apples and dried fruits.
The growth we've seen over the last few years has taken a bit of managing though. The biggest issue has been staffing.
In October, we switched from a single shift to a two-shift system across all our lines from 6.30am to 10pm Monday to Friday, which has been a major upheaval, but had to be done. Basically, we were growing so fast that running on single shifts was pushing our overtime bill through the roof.
But it also meant that key staff were doing ridiculous amounts of overtime, which wasn't sustainable. Of course, there will always be winners and losers when you make a change like this; people doing loads amounts of overtime will earn less - even if the new hourly rate goes up, which it has. Overall, however, it's actually been cost neutral and increased our flexibility and capacity. It also means that you don't get this situation when a late order comes in that you are keeping staff on a high rate for hours at the end of a shift just to get the order out.
Playing the market
It helps that we're in the largest growing region for Bramley apples and close to our customers. If you want short shelf-life cold mix products with the minimum use of preservatives and so on, you don't want to source them from miles and miles away.
Until Magners came along, I used to be able to claim that we were the biggest buyers of Bramley apples in the country, but now they buy more than anyone else!
We grow about 1,300t of apples ourselves at Fourayes Farm, but we have to buy the rest from growers in Kent and East Sussex. Some we buy under contract and the rest via the spot market. Ideally, we want to link the grower, the processor (Fourayes) and the manufacturers we supply in fixed term contracts with a fixed price and fixed tonnage, so we ask our growers to contract up 50% of their fruit in an ordinary year. This means that regardless of whether they have a bad frost year or not, they will be able to supply us with the tonnage, so no one in the loop comes unstuck. This makes it easier for everyone to plan ahead and stops this seesaw effect on profits you get from a couple of years of over cropping when prices fall, followed by a frost year - when prices suddenly go through the roof.
It's been hard to sell this concept to everyone because there are always people out there that like playing the market. However, people with contracts in place are now saving money because of the Magners effect!
Chiller space
This factory was built in 1997. That was a big investment (£500,000), so we had this brand spanking new factory and rather sad looking kit because we couldn't afford to buy both at the same time! Since then, we've upgraded or replaced virtually all of our kit and brought in new technology and automation where possible.
We store apples in a controlled environment of 1% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide at 4.5°C to control their respiration. When they are ready for processing, every single apple is weighed and a computer system determines which peeler it goes to. We have six fully automated apple peelers that peel about 105 apples a minute. We've also joined a resource efficiency club to help manage waste and reduce utility bills, which is where we've seen the largest increases in costs.
We used to supply our apple sievings (peel, core, pips, stalks) to local farmers for cattle feed, but that outlet has dried up, so we've been forced to put them in for composting, which is expensive. Potentially of course, there should be other avenues to explore because the sievings have lots of nutrients and fibre in and it seems crazy throwing them away. We've got someone looking into opportunities in this area now.
From a planning point of view, what's hard to handle is the big orders you get hit with at short notice, although we're pretty good at getting stuff out of the door when this happens.
The funny thing is that what's actually driving order sizes in some cases is the size of our customers' chillers rather than anything else! They don't have adequate chill space for their raw materials, so we get customers taking two or three deliveries a week, when if they had the space, it would be far more efficient for them to have one.
Internally, we've also been forced to up our game as the complexity of the operation has increased. Our operations director, who had originally been working on a consultancy basis, joined us full time to introduce lean manufacturing across the plant. Without proper stock control and scheduling systems I knew this would be a nightmare.
We also spent £70,000 on a new manufacturing resource planning system and new accounting software to meet the needs of the business in the future. In addition, we have a rolling five year plan covering staffing, equipment, and product diversification.
Never a dull moment
Nothing really keeps me awake at night apart from staffing issues and food scares, where one company can make a mistake and the whole industry can be brought down because of the speed of communication these days and the appetite of the media for this kind of thing. There are also niggling things like the move away from modified starch to clean label products, with little or no reasoning behind doing so.
Overall, however, it's a great job. One of the highlights of 2006 was bringing my daughter's class on to the site. They did everything from tractor rides to getting kitted up into hairnets and coats, pressing buttons and making things go up and down. They had a fantastic time! It's things like that which make it all worthwhile.
I do have to spend more time strapped to my desk than ever before, but I love the interaction with staff and the banter, as well as the interaction with customers. It suits me. I'm not a routines man - I could never be an accountant!
INTERVIEW BY ELAINE WATSON
FACTORY FACTS
Location: Fourayes Farm, Bicknor, Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8BJ. Tel: 01622 884230
Products: apple purees, apple products, mincemeat, hot and cold mix fruit fillings for pies, desserts
Employees: 70 - but more over the festive season
Customers: Major bakery and desserts manufacturers such as Manor Bakeries, Inter Link Foods, Northern Foods, Samworth Brothers
PERSONAL
Name: Phil Acock
Age: 43
Career highlights: "There are several key moments. The big one was taking over the company in 1995, closely followed by the opening of the new factory in 1997 and then the opening of the extension in 2002.
"Being chosen as Marks & Spencer's apple supplier in its "love of food" advertising campaign also has to be one of the highlights!"
Domestics: married with three kids (nine, seven and five years old)
Outside work: enjoys sailing, golf and windsurfing
