My family by marriage is in the fruit and vegetable business in Germany, in a fairly large scale way. Much of what they sell is imported from outside EU. Discussions of food supply post Brexit are similarly hysterical nonsense.
Silvaire wrote:
fruit and vegetable business in Germany
How long did it take to set up?
Silvaire wrote:
Much of what they sell is imported from outside EU
How long did it take to set that up?
Does your family business feed 60 million people?
Money talks, and nothing will change.
Timothy wrote:
Firstly, he is a deeply honourable man, and falls way outside your perception of the average FTSE100 guy.
Can we have a new thread on what we perceive to be the attributes, or not, of the average FTSE100 guy. Peter, litigation alert.
I will give a starter for 10. Pig, Golden Trough, Plonker and from here we start to go downhill…..
If brexit makes people eat more veg, the UK will become the world’s richest country just on the NHS savings alone 
And a lot more private pilots will keep their medicals 
You would be amazed at how many people have left EuroGA over the years because they stopped flying, following a loss of their medical.
If 60m UK people ate veg, that would be wonderful, but they don’t. More like 6M Queue up at your local and see what’s in the trolleys. Well, crisps are potatoes so they are veg, right?
If Timothy’s friend was to be right, he will be fired at the next AGM for not having executed a Plan B. So I can see he may be concerned.
On the wider topic of shipping stuff back and forth over the border, I think this is nuts. It is/was supported by (a) lazy “logistics specialists” (the guys with lots of hair gel and an MBA (Hons) from the Univ of Upper Warlingham) in big companies and (b) flat-rate EU-wide deals from the likes of DHL which play into the hands of these lazy “logistics specialists”. I see this in my business all the time. The price of all this shipping is paid by the end customer and is good for only one thing: burning lots of diesel in trucks running up and down the motorways. If this changes, it will be good for all. One big customer of mine has just shut their central distribution centre in mainland Europe and is again having stuff shipped to their UK warehouse, from where they ship it to where people buy it. They used to twist the arm of their suppliers to pay for the shipping to the central warehouse and they probably found that the suppliers started to jack up their prices. This company has a “zero price increase ever, for ever, otherwise we cut your throat” policy and their purchasing manager nailed his balls to the mast on that policy, so could not climb down without a lot of pain
I have met a whole range from out and out psychopath to totally honourable. This (supermarket) man is way at the honourable range.
I was also lucky enough to be friends with Mark Sebba, before his sad and tragic early death a few weeks ago. This is what his employees thought of him:
You cannot paint them all with the same brush. Would you like to be judged by the public perception of “private pilot”?
Timothy wrote:
Would you like to be judged by the public perception of “private pilot”?
What would be your starter for 10 then on the subject, Private Pilot?
Peter wrote:
If Timothy’s friend was to be right, he will be fired at the next AGM for not having executed a Plan B.
I think you fail to understand the role of chairman.
But this is exactly why businesses, particularly big businesses, need stability. If this particular supermarket were to spend hundreds of millions on a distribution network based around sea and air transport from S America, rather than HGVs coming in from Europe, and then Brexit turns out to be softer than an Andrex puppy, or non-existent, then they will be castigated by their shareholders for wasting the money.
We are not talking about a greengrocers shop in Germany or an electronics lab in the garage, we are talking massive logistics and distribution networks. Next time you are on the motorway and see either a European 44 tonner or a UK supermarket lorry, then the chances are that that is a part of the logistics. You cannot change it overnight.
Peter wrote:
lazy “logistics specialists”
Ridiculous. Supermarkets work on tiny margins. Any errors in their logistical arrangements would cost them dear. They are beautifully well honed and well oiled machines. My fear is that we are going to see what happens when that machinery is disrupted.
How much of the food sold in the UK originates in the EU? Why would anybody change existing money making distribution as a result of a minor change in politics within a small political block (the EU)?
This thread is really an object lesson in the inward looking tendency of the the EU, and the undue respect given to politics and authority. The solution for the UK, in this situation as in so many others, is to just get on with it and stop fussing about endlessly.
Timothy wrote:
They are beautifully well honed and well oiled machines. My fear is that we are going to see what happens when that machinery is disrupted.
Yes honed to the point where the guys who actually haul the stuff are trimmed to the marrow on cost. The average cost from a hauler to a customer on a haul of goods, 38 tonnes, is less than they were getting 20 years ago. I used to haul cardboard and paid my haulier 85.00 per load, within a 40 mile radius. Today, 83.00 if you are lucky???? Most hauliers have gone out of business. Do you honestly believe that supermarkets work on the tiniest of margins. What was the Tescopoly profit a few years ago. How many billions, selling pork pies and tins of Heinz beans to the masses, whilst every supplier was stuffed senseless.
CEO after CEO fired by his caring and sharing shareholders when the divided dropped by 1p. CEO walks off with his 4.5m payoff for failure, blah, blah. Sorry, a murky mire with a lot of bovines in the golden Trough.
