Managers and seasonal workers in short supply
The current concerns of the soft fruit and vegetable sector centre around a shortage of seasonal labour but it appears there is just as great a need for well-trained professionals at the management end of what are often very complex businesses.
Christine Tacon, Grocery Code Adjudicator and former chief executive of Co-operative Farms was in Dundee this week to explain how Management Development Services (MDS), a not-for-profit company which she chairs sets about making sure there is a constant flow of top quality young managers coming into the industry.
“The proposition is quite simple,” she said. “It is a two-year graduate scheme which offers six-month placements in four different businesses as well as off-the-job management training. We aim for nothing less than developing the food and fresh produce industry’s future leaders.”
The entrance qualifications are stringent with 27 per cent of the current batch of applicants having first class degrees.
The vast majority of the remainder have 2.1 degrees across a variety of disciplines. Remarkably there are 40 applications for every place.
“Currently there are 44 trainees out on placements with the 38 businesses who are members of MDS. Our ambition is to grow that to have 50 members and 60 trainees. Over 80 per cent complete the course and the record of graduates being offered jobs with one of the companies they have worked with is near 100 per cent,” said Tacon.
The rules for the companies involved are quite strict. They pay a membership fee, an annual subscription and are then charged a day rate of £119 per trainees. MDS pay the trainees and are their employers for the two years.
MDS’S only Scottish member to date is Arbroath-based Angus Soft Fruits. The company, with sales of £160 million per year, is owned by the Porter and Gray families. It markets their fruit and that produced by the 26 member Angus Growers group.
The company operates five packhouses in Scotland and one in England. It also has joint ventures with fruit producers in Morocco, Spain, Chile and now Zimbabwe.
Sales director John Gray said, “It is a fast-moving business delivering to over 50 distribution depots. Our members employ over 4,000 seasonal staff. They receive orders in the morning and by the same evening the fruit is packed and dispatched.
“We have a management team of around 50 and we are always recruiting. There is a shortage of graduates in Scotland and we are too small to have our own scheme. We are on our third MDS placement and we are pleased to have high-calibre trainees.”