It’s funny though seeing all this water comes back into mind of course the very hot, dry pea season that we had and then the minute we finish that and we got into August it was followed by a very very wet period. In fact I think we actually recorded rain on every day of august at Lowestoft.

The problem that is giving us is lifting potatoes.

As we’re not able to lift regularly for our daily supplies because of the weather and it being too wet so we’re having to look and buy a little bit in terms of making sure we can get our supplies from elsewhere in the country and we get back onto good going, as it were.

Anyway, catch you later.

Anyway, that’s going to be me signing off now for a week because we’re actually off to Portugal. So I’m going to forget work. But when I come back there’ll be loads of things of interest on the blog. About the soya harvest in Italy. About our foreign office, we’re meeting them tuesday after I get back. We’re going to review that and we’re going to give that some direction.

We’ve got next year’s contracts to sort out. And we’ve got a buying department to set up. Anyway I’ll keep you up to date with what’s going on.

That’s all from me. I’ll talk to you in a week’s time.

Unfortunately I’ve got to the castle and the grounds are shut and I can’t go in which is a bit of a disappointment. But, here we are, that’s the keep. Described as the guardian of the day which is a very apt description I think.

Anyway catch you later.

I made it down to the falls now as you can see from the photographs. We’re about half way around and because we’re low down we’ve got to go all the way back up to Richmond Hill which is a bit taxing to say the least.

It’s always nice to come down here and just appreciate the force of nature. I guess in the job that we do, you know the whole thing with live and die and you know with nature, seasons and all the rest of it. There’s only so much you can do.

I suppose we always have to take that into account. But more often than not in terms of what we’re doing in agriculture, you’re always reacting to what nature is doing. I suppose that’s the fascination because we never know what happens next.

Back in Richmond now down by the river. I’ve taken a photo of the castle from the bridge and then I’ve taken a photo of the bridge and I’m continuing the walk.

This is a photo of the swell taken from the old railway bridge. The old railway long defunct thanks to Dr Beeching way back in the sixties or it could’ve been the seventies. Can’t even remember. (1963 -dug)

I quite often like to have a walk down here and it’s quite interesting because you sort of think back to everything that’s happened since then and also thinking about the future. Plus the sale of BirdsEye which was announced at the weekend and I made some comment on yesterday.

I’ve had a lot of people ringing me up, you know suppliers and growers, wanting to understand what it means for the business.

Clearly I’m entirely optimistic about that. And I think in terms of the strategy it’s about growing the business both top and bottom line. It’ll be a little while before we actually get into the detail of the how we achieve that strategy and what the tactics will be.

And everybody that I’ve spoken to from the farming community they’ve been entirely supportive and they’ll continue to do their very best to enable us to have a very successful business. So I’m looking forward to getting stuck into that.

Anway, I’m going a little bit further.

I didn’t capture anything. I mentioned that we were racing at Alton Park last weekend. Unfortunately I forgot to take the blog camera with me so I’ve no photographic evidence.

But had quite a good outing really. Managed to finish second in my class. Particularly difficult practice cause it was so wet and then quite a well fought race. So I’m quite pleased with that

Anyway. Catch you later.

Quite a lot happening though as no doubt you’ll be aware the anouncement was made on Monday that Unilever has sold its frozen food businesses (which includes Birds Eye) into private equity (a company called Permira).

I think for me and our business there are a lot of opportunities as a result of this. Obviously I’m very disapointed having had 33 years with Birds Eye under the previous ownership—I’ve had some very good times and I’ve had a damn good career out of it…

Anyway I think the whole thing is now set up and there a lot opportunities.

But on a personal perspective I hope we are able to continue the bits that Unilever was committed to. Things like corporate social responsability and the sustainability initiatives so hopefully we can continue that momentum because the whole of the business will not survive into the the future unless it’s sustainable.

So we look forward to working under new ownership—it think it is inevitable there will be a lot of differences, but hopefully all for the good of the business, and personally I’m looking forward to it.

Still a lot of details to work out, we also need to make sure our commited suppliers are kept informed, which we will do… I’ll catch you later.

Tags: primera, unilever

I could take a couple of photos of the management team at the Lowestoft factory with their wives enjoying the evening races at Yarmouth. Can’t say I am because we’re down at the moment. But there’s one more race to go!

I thought you’d find this interesting, it’s a 1970 Merlin-17 Honda Ford 1600 (from the FF1600 Formula Ford racing class) that I use occasionally in the HSCC (Historic Sports Car Club) historic racing class or sometimes in the Classic Formula Ford 1600 championship. The next race is at Oulton Park next week, so I’m looking forward to that. (I’m a bit rusty though—having not raced in a while—so we’ll see how that goes, and there’s quite a lot of work to do on the car to get it all prepared in time).

Had a bit of a strange day today. We’ve had some fairly severe thunderstorms in East Anglia with some very heavy downpours. We’re hoping—fingers crossed—that it’s not going to be too wet for us lifting potatoes on Monday and certainly hope that the rain will be benefiting the main season crops because things don’t look all that brilliant for raw materials on potatoes and we need to spend a bit of time and attention next week looking at that and making sure we’re covered into the future.

We’ve got a meeting on Thursday afternoon with our suppliers and we hope to find out our true position from that meeting then we’ll be able to see where we go from there…

OK, signing-off.

Tags: formulaford

Just out with Doris this morning contemplating the day ahead. I’ve just taken a photograph looking out across the Blyth Valley which shows that harvest in this part of the world is just about finished, in fact a lot of people have even got their wheat harvests completed which is quite remarkable for this time of year and it’s a refection of the weather that we’ve had.

As far as we’re concerned, as you know it’s almost a week now since we’ve finished peas and we’re still taking stock of the situation. This morning we’ve got a financial review meeting which sounds exciting but it probably won’t be. This is a complete review of all the cost assumptions that we’ve made and to see where we are.

So, I’m with the accountants this morning getting my annual dose of reverse logic:-)

I’ll let you know how that goes.

Our American friends in DC were also struggling with the heatwave earlier this month. Just came across this nice shot of a wind turbine and I thought you might be interested in this photograph of the wind turbine just outside my office in Suffolk. The turbine is standing more or less on the most Easterly point in England!

I don’t know whether it looks nice or not to be honest, but it’s a bit of a distraction on a sunny morning. You get a strobe effect in the office—when it’s windy, the tips of the propeller are going at 110 miles-per-hour and that’s what creates this effect that’s distracting. Anyway, we’re about used to it now and if not, we shut the blinds but it’s a pity to do that on a sunny morning…

We’ve a few things to report which I will do when I get a bit of time later on.

Just reporting that we’ve finally finished with 140 tonnes yesterday. So that’s the season completed.

We had a bit of a scare because of how constantly hot and dry it has been right the way through. Yesterday it was extremely wet and of course at one stage we weren’t going to be able to complete. But that’s how it goes.

I’ve got a meeting also today with the whole of the catchment team looking at the impact of where we are with volumes, quality and everything else. So I might just let you know how that goes.

Hello, it’s James here. So, that’s it! Well, that’s nearly it. We’re in the last field now, the one up on the coast that you’ve seen in the photographs. Very cool these last few days and and very wet but we got there eventually.

Just about to finish 55 days of hard slog since we started. It’s not been the best of seasons but everybody has done their absolute best to make sure we got as much out of it as possible, so from that point of view its a success.

Not much more to be said really—bit of a lie in tomorrow and then we get cracking with the 2007 planning.

Enjoy those peas:-)

[Dug adds: It looks like Colin will be carrying on with his posts. He has a lot of difficult days ahead with the wider environmental and sustainability issues and he wants to tell that story.]