BSA INDUSTRY DINNER
Responsibility and leadership As might be expected in the wake of challenging times, Patrick Coveney’s (pictured) recent address to the BSA’s Industry Dinner covered a range of fundamental factors that are poised to impact the food to go sector’s recovery and on-going development. THE CHALLENGE OF COVID “We are really living with the reality right now that if one part of the supply chain is not strong, then none of it is strong,” said Patrick Coveney. “It is going to be so important as an industry, and certainly Greencore will play its role on that, that we focus on bringing the industry back together. “I‘ve probably had the ability to observe, and contribute to, quite a lot of change in the UK sandwich industry, with Greencore acknowledged as a leader in the UK sandwich industry, at least in the prepared part of the market. We make around 70% of all the sandwiches that are made in the UK right now – about a billion food to go items a year or 20 million per week. So it’s a significant business with a significant set of responsibilities around keeping people fed across Britain. With that position comes a lot of responsibility and industry leadership, be that on quality or food safety or supporting across the supply chain. “2021 is an important milestone for Greencore, being 30 years a public company and twenty years operating in the UK, that really being on the back of the acquisition of Hazlewood Foods twenty years ago. And we’re ten years a world leader in the food to go market following the acquisition of Uniq in 2011.”
In thinking about what to speak about and chatting with the leadership team prior to the dinner, Patrick Coveney went on to say that a colleague had suggested it might be a depressing outing and that there was “no joy” left in the UK sandwich industry. In part, this was right, he felt, the obvious reason being Covid, and the less obvious reason being the current supply environment which had not been anticipated, and that he hadn’t expected to be “wrestling with having been through the twelvemonth acute challenge of Covid.” On the topic of Covid - and what Greencore as a business had been through with it, by way of example – Patrick Coveney said that they anticipated Covid. “In so far as you could be, we were actually ready for it in February and early March of 2020. We learnt straightaway the power – and we learned this for real, as opposed to theoretically – of having a purpose that was more than profit. Straightaway we were wrestling with health and safety issues that were existential to the lives of the people who worked for us,” said Patrick Coveney. “We also recognised the power of responsibility because we were put under massive governmental pressure to keep Britain fed through Covid. People forget that in early to
28 November 2021 www.sandwichandfoodtogonews.co.uk
mid-March 2020, perceived wisdom in No 10 was that the retail food chain was going to fall over. There were actually cabinet meetings held to discuss whether they would nationalise the UK retail; that was the scale of the concern. “But as an industry, we did an incredible job of keeping Britain fed and people from all parts of it rolled in to ensure that despite all of the considerable challenges we succeeded with this noble purpose of keeping 68 million people safely fed. But that came with cost…” Most people in attendance at the dinner, Patrick Coveney pointed out, experienced Covid looking at a computer screen, kept working, and kept working very hard, he felt, but nevertheless the computer screen was the ‘felt experience’ for most present. “Many of the people who worked with us, and for us, didn’t have the ability to work through a computer screen. They had to turn up to work to keep Britain fed. And there are hundreds of people from our industry who died of Covid,” said Patrick Coveney, before asking those gathered to take time on behalf of all the people who worked for them to quietly acknowledge in a moment’s silence the sacrifice and contribution that was made by many people who worked in their businesses.
