Opinion

We'll buy British ­ but not at any price. That was the message barely concealed between the lines of IGD president Tom Vyner's speech at the final flag-waving conference of the Strathclyde Food Project last week. You might say the Sainsbury deputy chairman was summing up what has long been most UK multiples' message to suppliers ­ deliver the goods, or you're out. But there was something about the early spirit of Strathclyde that had prompted buyers to go that little bit further in support of home producers. As Safeway's Sir Alistair Grant, the prime mover behind the SFP, said last Friday, one of the assumptions underpinning the whole programme was "that it would be a good thing if UK producers obtained a bigger share of the UK domestic market". Now there is no longer a single, focused group with that idea at its core, and the SFP has been absorbed into the IGD under the new Market Foresight banner, will that assumption survive? IGD chief executive John Beaumont is at pains to stress that the SFP's work will continue in broadly the same vein. Some projects had already come to a "natural conclusion" ­ such as that with Unigate subsidiary Malton Bacon, which has seen large scale import substitution by British pigmeat at the expense of the Danes and the Dutch, and the development of substantial export sales too. But some were continuing, and new projects would come along in due course. "I certainly don't see Market Foresight as a retrenchment from what Strathclyde was doing," he told us. When the SFP emerged five years ago it rang all the right bells and saw supermarket buyers and primary producers coming to the table with a new willingness to compromise on previously entrenched positions. In fresh produce particularly, it changed the mindset of growers forever, making them far more consumer aware. The wider availability of British late strawberries and the rediscovery of traditional apple varieties are just two results. But it will only be when Market Foresight yields similar fruits that we will know for sure that the Strathclyde project has not just been quietly laid to rest. {{NEWS}}