THE suggestion that Northern Foods is considering closing the Fox's Biscuits factory in Batley must have my great-grandfather, Michael Spedding, my grandfather, F E Fox, my uncles 'Mr Michael' and 'Mr Alfred' Fox and my mother, Susan nee Fox, turning in their Batley Cemetery graves!
This isn't merely a question of sentimentality but rather one of seriously bad managerial judgement on the part of Northern Foods.
As one who has worked internationally as an executive in the food manufacturing industry for close to 50 years I b
elieve that I have a fair understanding of the business.
Your correspondent, Mrs K M Exley (Letterbox, August 22) is correct in identifying the mid-Eighties change of management as the beginning of the current situation.
With the departure of S C Oldham, Northern Foods carried out a totally unnecessary 'clean sweep' of the highly competent Batley middle management, good people I knew and worked with, and this started a roundabout of management changes that likely continues today.
Typically each new regime would come forward with novel solutions to the perceived problems of the day while the real problem was that few if any of them had little if any understanding of the biscuit industry and Fox's niche within it.
Fox's Biscuits was built by my family to manufacture high quality, specialised products that met a discerning market need, particularly through 'private labels'such as Marks and Spencer.
Of necessity this could only be achieved through the acceptance of lower volumes and great flexibility.
That is why the Batley and Kirkham plants, both of which I am familiar with, work together to produce a viable business which competent management can make highly profitable. Isn't that why Northern Foods bought the company in the first place?
What Fox's business does not lend itself to is a likely £50m-cost plant, these projects always cost more than estimated, designed more to try and compete with United Biscuits than to meet the particular needs of its customers.
The interest and depreciation on that amount of investment alone will make the venture unprofitable for years, and that's a whole lot of shoddy to pull over shareholders' eyes by a management that surely won't be around when the chickens come home to roost!
The sheer waste of years of employee service and experience is, even in this day and age, appalling and unnecessary. They deserve some of the 'respect and recognition' that the Northern Foods website boasts.
Northern Foods need to give their heads a shake and realise that while they can take the Fox's Biscuits out of Batley they can never take out the generations of Batley know-how and still expect to make real top quality Fox's Biscuits!
D MALCOLM BLACKBURN
Cobourg
Ontario
CANADA
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