A CARAS Cymru Field Day held in Pembrokeshire has thrown the spotlight on Welsh food at two of the county's top produce distributors.

A council meeting of the Council for Awards of Royal Agricultural Societies and lunch at the Pembrokeshire County Showground was hosted by Puffin Produce and CARAS business was followed by a fascinating address from CEO Huw Thomas and a tour of Puffin Produce, as well as the new Pembrokeshire Creamery.

Authentic Welsh supply, bringing Welsh produce to customers in Wales and beyond, is the mantra at Puffin Produce Ltd and the newly emerging Pembrokeshire Creamery Ltd. Puffin Own Label potatoes and the Blas y Tir brand are sold to retailers and wholesalers throughout Wales.

The approach is underpinned by rigour throughout every level of operation: relationships, finance, loyalty, quality and trust. And, as a dairy farmer’s son, CEO Huw Thomas said he will also be applying this to the new creamery.

He summed up the ethos: “Welsh milk from Welsh cows on Welsh farms eating Welsh grass, the Welsh economy, the Welsh environment, Welsh supermarkets, Welsh people. It’s about being Welsh.”

He outlined the importance of Puffin to south west Wales and traced its progress from his return to Pembrokeshire 15 years ago. The original grower owned business formed in 1994 then employed 55 people with a turnover of £5/6 million. It now employs 300 people with a turnover of £50 million, expected to double within 12 months with the fully commissioned new dairy.

The Welsh consumer is one of the cornerstones of success, along with a ‘great group of growers’ and rigorous mathematical management. Tight financial control, with daily and weekly KPIs, facilitates a tight grip on raw material use, labour and finance costs. The approach brings balance and foresight, a business braced for challenge.

Puffin currently packs 65,000 tons of locally grown Welsh PGI potatoes and leeks, as well as a range of seasonal vegetables and Welsh daffodils. Huw Thomas explained that this close working relationship with a group of 15 to 20 growers is crucial.

He said: “Our relationship with our growers is a core strength really. We try and formalise that a little bit.

“The last couple of years, we have been doing joint business plans and agreeing what potatoes we want them to grow for us. They will tell us what they are investing in, what they’re doing in the next couple of years and any way we can support them with that.

“We ask them to do carbon footprints. We do financial modeling and benchmarking to help them know where they are and help them with their own efficiency by seeing where they stand.”

Support for growers and suppliers extends to the workforce, with local field labour very difficult to recruit. The company works closely with a leading UK licensed labour provider and has bought a local hotel, among other measures, for their seasonal workers.

Their relationship with retailers is another cornerstone, with the business responding to a growing awareness among supermarkets that the Gen X coming through is very environmentally aware. Protecting and building on the natural capital of the Pembrokeshire landscape, with its hedgerows and biodiversity, involves measuring and monitoring environmental impact throughout the production process.

Renewable sources provide up to 95% of daily energy use. The largest rooftop solar installation in Wales was installed in the Summer of 2023, with 6,000 solar panels.

The company is also looking at various ways of reducing the impact of ‘the two big hitters in the carbon footprint of potato growing’, diesel and nitrogen fertiliser. Cover crops, carbon offsetting, planting unproductive areas with trees could help to halve that footprint.

Investment is geared to making the business as efficient as possible, with the potato packing facility probably the most automated and efficient in the UK. Profits over the past ten years have been ploughed back into the business, with very competitive facilities putting them in good stead for the next 15 to 20 years.

There had been Welsh Government help and a new equity partner has helped with the creation of the £22 million state of the art milk bottling facility, Puffin Creamery.

Huw explained: “A hundred million litres a year will be 70/80% of the retail market in Wales. So what we want to do is start gaining more of the big supermarkets in Wales.

“Then we’ll start edging that farmer group up to probably 20 or 25 farmers. It’s not huge volumes, not like cheese. It will be a nice group that we can work with and again, in the same ethos as Puffin, return the right amount of money to those farmers so they can invest.

“We want to sign long term deals with retailers, so that we underpin our dairy farmers with a longer vision for them so that they can invest as well.”

Initially, the milk will be sourced from grass fed cows in what he feels is one of the best milk producing areas of the UK if not Europe. Consumers are beginning to understand the quality of dairy produce, but west Wales lacks processing capacity, with more than half of the milk from Wales going into England for processing.