Why supporting Welsh produce turns out to be all about … supply chains

Carwyn Graves

“We may be small – but we don’t want to be a niche, high-end producer making a drink only a very select demographic can access,” explains Sam Robinson, director of Dyfi valley cidermaker ‘Seidir Tydecho’.

In a food market dominated by huge global players, even larger Welsh firms find it difficult to break into the supermarket grocery sector and are at the mercy of those firms’ whims when they do.

That’s why those Welsh-based medium-size logistics and distribution companies we all see on our highways and byways – e.g. Castell Howell, Blas ar Fwyd, Harlech Foodservice – play such a pivotal role in Wales’ food landscape today.

Vans

“When my parents founded Blas ar Fwyd in Llanrwst in 1988,” explains Osian, Operations Manager at the company, “it was impossible to get cheese from southern Wales up here in the north – and vice versa. The hospitality industry tended to buy very little locally, but they could see people were keen to support local producers.”

With a turnover by now of around £8 million annually, Blas ar Fwyd with its 70 employees remains a small player by UK grocery standards. It has played a significant role in role in connecting small Welsh producers with customers in different parts of Wales, without the risk of being dropped or undercut that producers face from the major supermarket players.

“It tickles me – for some reason people really love seeing the vans we use, that literally do go to every cwm, corner and community in Wales. You even get these crazy ‘spot the Blas ar Fwyd van’ viral trends popping up on social media!”

It turns out though that the ability to pick up a relatively small amount of Gwynedd goats’ cheese or Breconshire savoury biscuits one day and get that to customers in another part of Wales the next is at the core of what created the model’s success – and also its wider societal impact on the viability of local producers in Wales.

Values

“First and foremost for us it’s because we do this because we care. We are a business, and it makes good business sense for both producers and suppliers to see us as dependable and on their side,” says Osian. “But there is more to it than that. It takes a bit of backbone to stick to your values in an industry that can be as cut-throat as this one. In the long run though what we’ve found is that a community has grown up among small-scale producers in Wales, who are willing to help each other out. A lot of them are in this line of work because they love food, and they love feeding people great Welsh produce.”

We went to get a view from the other side – from producers and retail outlets that Blas ar Fwyd sell from and supply. “We’re a small cidermaker – in our world that means less than 10,000 litres annually,” Sam goes on. “It’s true that ultimately the sums don’t add up for us to run a business just off selling to local outlets. For us it comes down to the fact that companies like Blas ar Fwyd will sell a lot of our product in places we can’t feasibly reach. In fact, we don’t even need to run our own online shop because we can just direct people theirs.”

Culture and the market

“Keeping a simple supply chain like we have – where there aren’t many actors all needing to take a margin – does help us keep the prices competitive, even against global brands where they have huge economies of scale,” Osian muses.

Do they see their business as doing anything to contribute to food culture in Wales, I ask hesitantly? Surprisingly, perhaps, the answer comes back confidently in the affirmative.

“What would you call ‘sparkling wine’ in Welsh?” Osian asks with a smile. “Gwin Pefriog” is my answer. “I thought you might say that – it’s a fairly common term these days, but it’s one my father coined in the early days and used in our marketing and catalogues. And I do think having that native term has contributed to the way Welsh sparkling wine has won its place alongside English sparkling wine over recent decades as something people take seriously.”

It’s hard to disagree – and difficult to imagine the diversity of the Welsh producers dotting the country without the route to local markets enabled by companies like these.