Greencore plans for no-deal Brexit

In the second part of our exclusive video interview – filmed at this year’s Food Manufacture​ Business Leaders’ Forum, sponsored by law firm DWF​ ​– chief executive Patrick Coveney spoke of the contingencies Greencore had in place to help mitigate the effects of a no-deal Brexit.

“The sort of issues that we’re taking on are: should we be building stocks of raw materials that are important to our products and we are doing that where we can,” ​he explained.

“Secondly, we are looking at how we give ourselves the best chance to be able manage our way through any disruption to the fresh food supply chain… we are working hard on securing the ingredients we need.”​

Ingredient scarcity ​

Greencore was also working with customers to offer alternatives to ingredients that could become difficult to source in the event of a no-deal Brexit, while still offering consumers a broad level of choice when it came to products. Coveney highlighted spinach and rocket as two ingredients that could become scarce, due to their seasonality and reliance of being grown outside the UK.

The Greencore boss was confident that the food sector would be able to cope with a disruption of three to four weeks after Brexit.

Long-term disruption​

However, should disruption to the supply chain extend to a three- to four-month period, the industry would have to look at different ways of getting raw materials into the country. Sea and road freight would be supported by more air-cargo.

“We’re working with our customers on both scenarios,”​ Coveney added.

Meanwhile, watch the first part of this exclusive interview here​​ and look out for more coverage from this year’s Business Leaders’ Forum in next month’s issue of Food Manufacture​​​ magazine and online.

Music: Tech Live Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/