Local makes good

Steve Pearce, managing director, Southover Food Company

Coming as I did from a long line of butchers, including my father, grandfather and his father, butchery is what I inevitably set out doing after leaving school at 16. In 1989 I set up my own company with my wife, Liz, in Southwick, Brighton. We named it Southover Food Company after the street we first lived in and the house we remortgaged to start up! As an experienced and trained butcher, I began hand-producing high quality, locally sourced, cooked hams and other meats which I distributed across the Brighton area.

It wasn't too long before customers were asking us to supply a wider range of speciality foods in addition to our meats - locally produced cheeses, savoury pastries, cakes and soups. Around the same time, we also started to grow our distribution network, supplying small local delis, cafés and restaurants across the south of England. We still supply many of those businesses today, but now distribute speciality foods across the whole of the UK.

Provenance might be a relatively new trend in the food industry, but we have always believed that local is best. Our reputation is based on the high quality of our locally sourced produce, from our cooked meats to the other Sussex brands we supply, which include Higgidy Pies and Kate's Cakes.

Investment in the business​

This year is particularly exciting for us, as we are to celebrate our 20th birthday. We are well set up for 2009 as last year saw the completion of a major £400,000 refurbishment and expansion plan of our meat production units. As a result, we have increased our production space by almost 30%, and we've added a new slicing and despatch unit, as well as a development kitchen. In addition, we have new flooring, walls and a lift, and have updated the refrigerated area.

It was quite an arduous experience. To be honest, I'm not sure we'd have taken it on in today's economic climate: it took twice as long as we had anticipated and cost twice as much. However, the results are well worth it, as it has given us the potential to double our meat production capacity.

In addition to investing in our premises, we are also firm believers in investing in people. Back in the early days, there were only three of us working around the clock. Now we employ a team of 40, and we all work just as hard! We're lucky with our staff. Everyone has a distinct role and cares about their job.

We have a full-time quality assurance manager, Shane Beckford, who keeps us on our toes and helps us work to the highest standards possible. With Shane's help, we have been recognised as an Investor in People since 2005. This has been really beneficial in terms of developing and supporting our team efficiently and effectively as individuals.

In particular, it has improved our strategies for internal communication, appraisals and training. At the start of the year, we enrolled more than half our staff from across the company on NVQ training courses: NVQ Level 2 Team Leading programme for our management team, and NVQ Level 2 Food and Drink Manufacturing Operations (focusing on health and safety, hygiene, traceability and quality) for our production and warehouse personnel.

Bespoke IT and satellite tracking​

Southover is all about quality. We have been inspected and accredited by hygiene experts EFSIS, which means we have strict controls and checklists in place at all levels of manufacturing and distribution. And like other companies, technology plays a valuable part in helping us to track our performance more accurately and efficiently.

A few years ago, due to increasing demand, we installed a bespoke IBM IT system to help with the ordering process. The system takes orders from call lists, produces picking sheets, and then deducts the orders from the stock. It provides information on our best sellers and lists items we either need to produce or stock more of. That's to mention just a few of its uses. Another feature we introduced at the time was the handheld Psion Workabout computer. This, more or less, does the same job but is used for our van sales. When delivering products we tend to put extra stock on board so that our customers have the option of buying more than they initially ordered.

Nowadays some of our customers are increasingly demanding higher traceability standards and a greater degree of quality control. We have responded to this by implementing a product from Transcan. From satellites, we can trace any of our 14 delivery vans' routes and their fridge and freezer temperatures. We can track our stock from the warehouse to the customer, and can record the refrigeration and freezer temperature at any point during the journey.

In the old days, we'd log the temperatures in a book at the end of the day, but now we have live information that we can access at any time. This lets us know if the fridges and freezers are working on the vans and if they are at their optimum temperature.

Similarly, if a customer rings up to ask where the delivery is, we can easily check its location, and estimate how long it will take to get there judging by the traffic in the area. This is becoming much more important to us, as we supply an increasing amount of sandwich chains in London and places where traffic is often problematic.

Every afternoon the information is downloaded for retraceability purposes. We also download temperature recordings for all of our fridges and freezers in the production and warehouse area. In such a way, if there's a problem further down the supply chain, we can soon detect whether the fault was at our end.

Plans for the future​

It's an incredibly hard time for everyone right now, even in the food and drink market which is said to be well placed compared with other sectors. But we are confident that people will continue to buy quality products offering customers something extra for their money.

With the refurbishment of our production unit behind us, our focus for 2009 is to grow our manufacturing and increase our offering of cooked meats. We are also actively looking for a partner distributor of high quality foods, to add our Southover Cooked Meats to their portfolio and take them to a new market. We hope to progress this when we exhibit at the international food and drink event IFE09 in London this March.

We've also been busy at work in our new product development kitchen, developing new lines to meet changing consumer attitudes. One such example is the new Grange Gammon range. The Grange Gammons are high-quality, 100% natural hams that have been carefully trimmed and reformed to provide a uniform slice and face size. This makes them ideal to meet the needs of portion control in an increasingly competitive market.

This year we are also looking at extending our range of cooked meats by producing new contemporary flavours for our gammons. For example, we are currently working with an ingredients supplier to flavour a gammon ham with juniper.

As far as predictions go for the next few years, I would describe myself as hopeful. Someone told me that people eat and drink their way through a recession. I certainly hope that's the case for all of us working in the food manufacturing industry!

Interview by Hayley Brown

FACTORY FACTS​

Location: Unit 4, Grange Industrial Estate, Albion Street, Southwick,

East Sussex, BN42 4EN

Tel: 01273 596830

Annual turnover: £5.6M

Employees: 40

Products: Homemade award-winning meat product range including the flagship Southover gammon range, pastrami, roast beef and cooked back bacon. It also distributes an extensive range of locally sourced speciality foods.

PERSONAL​

Name: Steve Pearce

Age: 44

Career highlights: "Starting up from scratch in April, 1989 and producing the first ham a week later."

Domestics: Married to co-founder Liz with two daughters: Emily, 21, and Joanna, 19.

Outside work: Marathon running (15 to date and running three this year) and other endurance events. I also enjoy taking my Labrador, Charlie for walks, kick-boxing and I've been trying to play the guitar, although I'm not very good at it!