Stronger together

With barely a week going by without some fresh attack on the food industry for poisoning our kids or furring up our arteries, you'd be forgiven for wondering why anyone would voluntarily stand in the firing line to head up its leading trade association.

The new president of the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), however, evidently relishes a challenge. He also makes it clear that keeping the tabloids happy is not top of his priority list. Ensuring journalists are aware of the FDF's position on key policy areas is important, stresses Ross Warburton, "but the primary task of the FDF president is not to manage the image of the food industry in the media"

While the industry's image could probably do with a makeover, Warburton (still an executive director of the bakery that bears his name) is more focused on ensuring its message gets across in Whitehall and Brussels and offering "demonstrable value" to members. He is also keenly aware that the FDF has to deliver some serious bang for its members' bucks this year if it wants to retain their membership fees in a recession. "In the current climate, companies are reviewing all discretionary expenditure, so we have to make it worth their while."

Although he isn't beginning his tenure with a rallying cry to boost numbers (FDF has already signed up the majority of major UK food and drink companies), he is keen to attract more small and medium sized enterprises.

"Every industry needs a point of collective representation and contact. And it's much better for that to be organised on a central and independent basis than for leading industry figures to be holding forth on certain topics all the time - not that they shouldn't ever do this. But government wants to know not just what individual companies think but what companies can agree on collectively."

But there is more to membership than lobbying, he says: "Companies need help dealing with the waves of regulation that come at us. Having an expert focal point when you are dealing with food incidents is also critical. We're the best mechanism for mobilising half a million employees when you've got a food scare."

As to what the important issues are - the relatively recent re-organisation of the FDF around three priority areas (health and wellbeing, food safety and science, sustainability and competitiveness) now makes this very clear for members, he says.

Whether recent attempts to seize the initiative in these areas have received the credit they deserve is a moot point of course, with admirable schemes on everything from collaborative distribution to water reduction too often drowned out by the media frenzy generated by the latest Which? survey revealing unacceptable levels of 'nasties' in cereals.

Inevitably, this can sometimes turn the FDF into a ministry of rebuttal wheeled out in the final paragraph of a news story to present the opposing view, accepts Warburton. "Of course we don't want to appear to be constantly on the back foot. In reality, we are responding to concerns well before they appear in the media. Reformulation is an obvious one. The industry has been reducing fat, salt and sugar for years."

As for the industry's sometimes fractious relationship with the Food Standards Agency, which has often appeared to be on a collision course with the FDF over nutrient profiling and salt targets, Warburton seems keen to avoid controversy. But when it comes to front-of-pack labelling - the guideline daily mounts (GDAs) vs traffic light debate, he is more forthright.

Front of pack labelling​

Having different systems across Europe would be spectacularly unhelpful, he says, and if you're going to pick one, GDAs are the best: "If you supply customers across multiple EU markets, having different sets of rules on front of pack labelling is not in the interests of manufacturers or consumers."

If FSA-commissioned research due out shortly finds strongly in favour of the FSA's traffic light scheme, the FDF will not change its position, he says. But isn't that ignoring what consumers say they want? Maybe, says Warburton. "But any nutritional labelling system must have a rational scientific basis - it's not just what consumers find 'easiest'. I'm struggling to see how we'd do a volte face on this. At the end of the day, GDAs are what we believe in."

On the FSA's 2012 salt targets, which other less circumspect members of his profession have described as "crazy" and "unworkable", Warburton is more diplomatic: "The 2012 targets were, well, 'presented' to the industry. But we have responded [to the FSA's consultation] appropriately. We've already come a long way, but we're into new territory now. We're well beyond palatability and into technological feasibility."

As regards the challenges facing the industry, food manufacturing has proved more resilient than many other sectors in the current climate, he points out. However, the weakness of sterling has "wiped out" the gains many members had been hoping for as commodity prices eased from last year's record highs.

"Many members have got very volatile commodities to manage and a very volatile currency, so the costs of hedging that have become more and more expensive," he says. "It's hard to work out what to do - it's a lottery."

In the short term, blue-sky innovation is also taking a hit as members are "having to focus resources on what will work in 2009/2010, not 2020", he says." It's also hard to work out whether trends such as the resurgence of frozen foods are structural or cyclical."

As for the day-to-day challenges of running a trade association with the Competition Commission now breathing down the neck of any companies that look like they might be working too closely together, legal advice is critical, says Warburton. "It's becoming more and more tricky to make sure you're not doing anything that might be considered improper. Fifteen years ago, it was a background concern, today we have to be constantly mindful of it."

He adds: "You don't discuss price. But it's in areas like reducing fat, sugar, salt and so on that you might encounter issues where there is no anti-competitive intent, but to appease one regulator, you could incur the wrath of another."

But why did Warburton feel compelled to add to his workload given that his day job as executive director of the family business cannot be a walk in the park? A brief glance at his CV (he has held non-executive roles at a raft of companies in addition to his trade association commitments) certainly suggests he likes variety. Perhaps there is also an element of wanting to prove himself that comes with the surname? This was after all a major factor in his decision both to avoid the family business when he graduated, and later on to take a major role in driving it forward. "When I graduated in 1980 I went to work in the City. But in 1985 I got a call from my cousin Brett to say he was going into the family business. My brother Jonathan was also there, so if they had made a roaring success of it I would have felt really left out!"

The family name can also prove a curse as well as a blessing: "You have to be harder working and more successful than everyone else - we also had to prove ourselves to the management, which knew far more about the business than we did when we started."

As for how he aims to achieve that mythical work-life balance, "nobody has given me a job description yet", admits Warburton. "I suspect previous incumbents have lied about the time commitment involved! If you have a plural life it has to be well balanced or you drop too many catches. I suppose the real test is: what would my wife say? I suspect she'd say less work, less sofa and bit more treadmill!"