- Location
- Yorks
Suppose it doesn't matter what I want. What matters is what the customer wants and what they're prepared to pay for. They buy Danish Crown and think nothing of it. The shopping trollies are full of it, the supermarkets are happy with it on the shelf, and it's a light touch 36 month inspection, so why would we want to have extra costs piled on the UK farmer when it gets placed next to each other on the shelf at Tesco.Would you be happy to buy Danish Crown and feed it to your children? I wouldn't.
Nobody likes being inspected especially self employed people, had lights put in cubicle shed years ago and told the electrician what I wanted , he said " who's doing the job "
Isn't that a bit like what we're saying to RT?
If Tesco say they want 12 month inspection RT bacon, that's fine, but don't tell us that and then buy DC and undermine our price. We must not be happy with that, and although we might like the ideal of the premium RT product and that premium product being purchased in preference, in reality the supermarkets' actions have not changed, they continue to want free gold plating from UK suppliers whilst they buy DC.
I'd like to think RT would give us a premium marketing edge over imports, and 100% shelf space, but it hasn't imho, not in 20 years. So why think anything is going to change now.
Just trying to think it all through. All the for and against reasons, and to try and make sense of it all, in order to decide how best to tackle the issue.
It makes perfect sense to go to Tesco and say "Look, DC supplies under Protocol X, yet you want us to supply under Protocol X+++. Tell you what, either ask us to continue supplying under Protocol X+++ and give us 100% of the shelf space, or we only supply under Protocol X. Alternative, we want you to only give DC shelf space if they also supply Protocol X+++. That's fair isn't it?"
At the moment we seem to have the worst of both worlds. We're supplying X+++, yet sharing our shelf space with import Protocol X competitor, who have lower costs so therefore can undercut us on price.