Firm went from selling peanuts to supplying the country with PPE
IF YOU’RE a fan of yoghurt-coated peanuts, brazil nuts, raisins or chocolate-coated honeycomb pieces, the Northern Irish confectioner Clandeboye has you covered.
Through their brand Crunch Craving, from their headquarters on Rathenraw Industrial Estate in Antrim they sell snack packs of all kinds of sweet treats or healthier bags of nuts.
What’s not clear is why this small family firm, which didn’t publish full accounts last year under the small companies exemption, emerged as one of the biggest suppliers of PPE to the Welsh Government at the height of the first wave of the pandemic this spring.
When, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, a cargo plane from Cambodia landed in Cardiff carrying 200,000 fluid resistant gowns desperately needed by the Welsh NHS, it had been sourced through the firm from Rathenraw – the most deprived part of Antrim.
Its main qualification to do so appears to be the fact that one of its directors also runs a building supplies firm that stocks PPE for the building industry.
At the time, First Minister Mark Drakeford said the flight, direct from Phnom Penh, was the result of “a lot of hard work behind the scenes to secure new supplies of gowns for our frontline workers”.
He and Health Minister Vaughan Gething proudly said that Wales was not relying on the UK Government and had sourced its own supplies with PPE stocks dwindling to enough to last just a few days.
Yet, as badly needed as that PPE clearly was at the time, questions are being asked about the lack of stockpiling of PPE ahead of the pandemic, the lack of competitive tendering that followed to source it and the prices paid for the PPE that was ultimately bought.
There’s no suggestion that Clandeboye did anything wrong – it appears to have used its connections to source protective clothing that the NHS desperately needed. But why was the Welsh Government forced to use its services?
The Wales Audit Office has confirmed to the Western Mail it is looking into how the Welsh Government went about sourcing PPE at the pandemic’s height. Wales paid £840,000 (excluding VAT) for the gowns in that first shipment from Clandeboye Agencies – around £4.20 per gown – which is significantly above the rate that was being paid before the pandemic.
The National Audit Office says the price of a gown in 2019 was around 33 pence.
After Clandeboye supplied Wales with PPE, it also won £108m of contracts with the UK Government.
Clandeboye didn’t respond to our requests for a comment and the Welsh Government provided a statement that said “people in Wales should be confident about the probity, safety and success of our PPE procurement”.
Clandeboye was not the only firm the Welsh Government used to buy PPE.
Three days later, a charter flight from Hangzhou, in China, touched down in Cardiff, this time loaded with 460,000 gowns destined for the Welsh NHS. Then, on May 12, another flight from China arrived packed full with more than a million items of vital PPE equipment for NHS workers.
The delivery contained another 600,000 fluid resistant gowns and 1.2 million fluid resistant surgical masks.
A Cardiff-based company, called Genmed Enterprises Ltd, helped source the Chinese supplies for Wales. It was awarded two contracts by the NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership in April totalling more than £15m.
Genmed, whose head office is a redbrick industrial unit in Bessemer Close, Grangetown, Cardiff, close to one of the city’s household waste recycling centres, supplied just over one million gowns for £7,500,000, which works out at £7.07 each.
Genmed was also paid more than £6.6m for the shipment of 1.2 million masks, working out at around £5.50 each.
The National Audit Office says respirator masks typically cost 94 pence and face masks 11 pence in 2019.
Genmed’s website says that while the Genmed brand is “relatively new to the market”, the management team has more than 30 years combined experience in the design, development, marketing and manufacturing of medical devices.
It says: “We understand the spikes in demand for healthcare providers and appreciate that we as a supplier are
expected to manage this by creating a very robust supply chain network.” It has “strategically situated” warehouses across the UK and Asia.
In its report into PPE purchasing in England, the National Audit Office described a surge in demand for PPE during the pandemic, combined with a fall in exports from China, which had previously manufactured most of the world’s PPE.
It said: “The result was an extremely overheated global market – a ‘sellers’ market’ – with desperate customers competing against each other, pushing up prices, and buying huge volumes of PPE often from suppliers that were new to the PPE market.
“The situation was made more difficult as the guidelines for wearing PPE, and the specifications and certifications that different types of PPE must meet, are complex and were updated throughout the pandemic, in particular as understanding of the virus improved.”
The Audit Office said the Department of Health spent £12.5bn on PPE – but had it bought that equipment at 2019 prices, it would only have cost £2.5bn.
Thanks to the initial batch of deliv
eries, Wales had secured around three months’ supply of fluid-resistant gowns for health and care services in Wales, which would allow Wales to support other parts of the UK if needed, Mr Drakeford said.
As the pandemic continued to sweep through the country, the NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership awarded a further six contracts for the supply of PPE, totalling nearly £70m, seemingly without any advertising or competitive tendering process. All contracts awarded by the Welsh Government, listed in the panel, were done without any competitive tendering process, citing reasons “due to the Covid-19 global pandemic”.
PharmaPac UK were awarded three separate contracts to supply Type IIR surgical masks (£12.8m), a one-off supply of gloves (£16.2m) and more masks (£6.05m). Bunzl Uk Ltd were given £18.6m to supply two batches of Type IIR surgical masks.
British Rototherm Group Ltd, which has its head quarters in Port Talbot, were paid £15.5m to supply the Welsh NHS with visors.
The Good Law Project, fronted by high profile barrister Jolyon
Maugham, has criticised the way the UK Government handed out its own PPE contracts and is challenging them in court.
The project especially criticises the way the DH&SC contracts were directly awarded to Clandeboye Agencies Ltd.
“As far as the claimants can discern, Clandeboye has never before been engaged in the business of sourcing or supplying PPE, whether for the Department of Health or any other public health service provider,” says the Good Law Project.
The Good Law Project goes on to argue that, as a “small company permitted to file unaudited/exempt accounts”, Clandeboye’s “financial and technical standing make it unsuited to the delivery of such large and important contracts”.
In papers it has filed in response to The Good Law Project, Clandeboye cites the success of its contract with the Welsh Government as a reason for it securing the contract with the UK Government.
It said: “Our client has a sister company which has supplied PPE for a number of years. Our client was selected over its sister company to make offers to the Secretary of State for PPE as Clandeboye Agencies Limited is the original family business to which a key director (to both companies) devotes most of his time.
“Additionally, our client has extensive experience in international sourcing and as a manufacturer’s agent on a commission basis, securing high value sales. It leveraged this by agreeing a supply agreement with a multi-national experienced PPE manufacturer, to make offers to NHS Wales and to DHSC for the First and Second Contracts.”
It appears that sister company is Anchor Fixings, which predominantly supplies the construction industry.
The findings of the Wales Audit Office have yet to be published and are due in the next few weeks, but a spokesman for the Welsh Government said: “Since early March, NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership (NWSSP) has distributed more than 466m items of PPE to health and social care in Wales. More than 233m items have been issued to social care settings. All PPE issued has been certified as safe to use. This process ensures that the PPE products meet the required certification, conformity, testing and manufacturing requirements and standards. All the PPE supplied has been within the required and tested expiry dates indicated on the packaging.
“The vast majority of PPE issued to the health and care sectors in Wales has been directly sourced by NWSSP through local, national and international procurement routes. People in Wales should be confident about the probity, safety and success of our PPE procurement.”
Both Cladeboye Agencies Ltd and Genmed Enterprises declined to comment for this article.