Touch wood

The towers of pallets are processed into ‘Genuine Jersey’ bags of kindling wood and exported to the UK.

Given that it must be so easy to manufacture and sell kindling anywhere in the UK, surely it would be cheaper for customers to buy from a local supplier and save the cost of importing it from Jersey?

‘A number of factors, including our unique production system combine to make this possible. Which is why we even pack for other UK brands. And when you add up all the bits of our operation as a whole we have something that’s worth doing commercially.

‘The addition of animal bedding to our production will further sustain the business and really demonstrate what recycling can achieve. We even ship out the pallet board nails, extracted with a big magnet. The nails are exported in former 45-gallon oil drums. Everything is used, nothing is wasted.’

“We do something

that no-one else does. We re-cycle pallets on an industrial scale. We also produce a coloured woodchip product called Colourbed, and a range of different woodchips. We also intend to expand our production of animal bedding, predominantly for the dairy industry

“The addition of

animal bedding to our production will further sustain the business and really demonstrate what recycling can achieve

The same innovation applies to the production and sale of Jersey Royals. It is in this respect that his name is probably most familiar to Island consumers: the logo ‘Richardson’s Jersey Royals’ is printed on the brown paper bags, on sale at supermarkets throughout the Island that contain the potatoes he harvests.

He only sells to retail outlets in Jersey and Guernsey, otherwise he exports directly to end consumers in the UK by mail-order via the Internet.

‘We use the same-sized brown bags for local retailers as we do for the Internet orders and for catering customers, which seems to work very well.’

Ultimately, he is hoping to supply the potential European market in the same way - indeed, why not over the whole world? His ambitions are not modest, just as they are not modest for his crop of Miscanthus - even if his ideas for this are currently on the back burner (he is just a bit busy elsewhere at the moment). ‘It’s a fibre - do we use it in the manufacture of paper plates? Fibreboard? Liquid fuel? It’s still early days.’

Watch this space.

The potatoes currently are more in the forefront of his mind: ‘There is a way to go yet but so far “touch wood” - everything is coming together nicely.’

For buying Doug Richardson’s Jersey Royals by postal delivery over the Internet, see www.jersey-royals.com