Paul Hill visited Southampton to find out how the fruit and veg wholesaler is aiming to achieve national coverage within five years
What is the history of the business?
SW: Mack was formed in 1874, with Matthew Mack laying the foundations on his stand at Covent Garden Market. Fast forward 152 years, and his great grandson Christopher is now group chairman at our parent company, Fresca, which was set up as a group of companies that own land to grow fresh produce directly, as well as partner with specialist growers both in the UK and globally.
Mack forms a key part of Fresca, and we are based across three facilities – including here in Southampton – where we work from a modern, purpose-built depot. From here, we offer a broad range of services including ship stores, and a fresh fruit and veg warehouse which supplies market traders, retailers and foodservice wholesalers.
Our facility in Bristol has been at the wholesale market near Temple Meads station for many years. While it’s not reliant on footfall anymore, it is our base for deliveries across the south-west and into Wales. Mack Bristol supplies a wide range of fresh produce to foodservice companies, market traders and retailers. We also have an emerging foodservice business there and supply hotels and restaurants directly around the Bristol area.
Our third location in Birmingham is more market reliant, and we now work from the relatively new Birmingham Wholesale Market near Villa Park, where customers browse and trade. We also deliver to the wider Midlands area from this location to both wholesale and foodservice customers.
Who and what do you supply?
Our main product portfolio is fresh, high-quality fruit and veg. The product range tends to stay the same, so the focus is always on improving the quality and freshness. Fresca has various product-specific companies, such as The Avocado Company, which gives us a great framework and supplier network to work from, and allows us to champion vertical integration opportunities. We also have significant ambient, frozen and chilled products specifically for our ship stores and foodservice businesses.
We then split our customer base into three key areas – ship stores, wholesale fruit and veg, and foodservice – which all marry up quite nicely together.
How does the ship stores business work?
The ship stores element accounts for almost half of our turnover and involves deliveries to UK ports, directly onto the cruise ships. We also pack containers here in Southampton to meet cruise ships at ports around the world, as well as ship products globally to other wholesalers for English products like Pukka Pies and English teas.
Southampton has always been a busy port hub for ocean liners, and Mack has been supplying the ships with fresh produce over a long period of time. To help with this, we also have our own import, customs and clearance teams.
Having the ship stores component is a great USP for us as that channel tends to have its own micro economy that doesn’t always necessarily reflect the wider UK economy. Furthermore, cruise ship contracts tend to be 12 months once a tender is secured, which allows us to plan and budget far in advance.
What are your long-term ambitions as a business?
At Mack, we have created a five-year strategy with a target to achieve national distribution and be able to deliver to any part of the UK within that time.
I joined from Harvest Fine Foods last year and immediately formalised The Mack Group Management Board, which includes heads of all the critical, functional areas. This includes newly appointed roles for a finance director, head of HR and a transformation director, as well as a head of compliance. One of our first priorities will be to modernise our digital frameworks, which include a new ERP system.
The five-year plan includes evolving the ship stores business to a broader international base. For instance, we’ve been talking to wholesalers in the Falkland Islands, which are supplying British citizens who require more familiar UK products.
Fruit and veg wholesale will also form a key part of achieving national coverage, which we aim to do through natural growth, but also through being opportunistic and obtaining new depots through M&A. The same goes for our foodservice business, which is comparatively small at the moment, but in five years’ time we’re looking to increase that considerably. In five years’ time, I’m not sure if there will be another business quite like ours in the UK.
How is Mack and the wider Fresca business performing financially?
The wider Fresca Group reported a 23% growth in group sales to £526m last year, with EBITDA up 17% to £15.7m. Mack’s turnover is expected to grow substantially over the next five years and forms a key part of the Fresca increase with the ship stores business benefitting from the continued popularity of global cruise travel.
