Retirement meant a vibrant new career for Harry J Kear, buying and reinvigorating companies. Kit Davies met him Harry J Kear spent six weeks feeling poorly, and realised he had done the wrong thing in retiring at 50. No gentle return to work, perhaps a consultancy or non-executive directorship, followed. Instead,with £25m swilling around in the family coffers, Kear decided to reinvent himself, to go plural in smallish scale but impressively energetic fashion, providing a startlingly inspirational tale for anyone who frets at not having really made it by, say, a positively wet behind the ears 40. Before his ­ ahem ­ retirement in 1997, Kear had been busy running the £80m turnover family bakery company Kears Group. Until then, he had only been concerned with heading up a national bread operation ­ he was a supplier for the Carrefour hypermarkets in the UK among other customers. But now he is beavering away buying companies and bringing them new life. First came a 50% stake in quiche and gateau supplier Scotts of the Dean, which "has thrived since I took control of it last October", and which now sits in a little factory next door to his office in a little Gloucestershire village. Next on the shopping list was TH Sutcliff in Newport, with £10m turnover, where he is driving Welsh heritage appeal with the St David's brand beef and lamb to the highest spec, hand in hand with the introduction of the most fashionable values ­ "traceability, GM-free, organic, and regional". The next buy ­ revealing a shrewd understanding of modern consumer trends ­ was A Taste of Italy, the Bath based supplier of fresh pasta, pasta salads, and pasta ready meals to Aldi and Spar. A new pasta plant has been installed and the firm is just about to get into chilled pasta. But then it was back to Newport, to buy Lovells, a struggling confectionery company, from Northumbrian Fine Foods, in January this year. This one is close to Kear's heart at the moment. He's already undertaken a fair bit of npd, such as the cereal bar Rooster, but thinks there is a great future for Milky Lunch, the chocolate covered nougat countline which to date has never made it beyond the cash and carry and which would have disappeared for good if not for Kear. He would like to see the Lovells factory turned over entirely to the production of Milky Lunch, and its stablemate Minty Lunch which has not been in production for a while, but which is set to return. Kear began working at nine years old as a van boy. After school he went to Cardiff College of Food Technology, and then joined the family business set up by his great grandmother. "It wasn't forced on me but it seemed the best option." Working life for the next 30 years involved steadily building the bread business, turning the concern into a national plant operation. But by July 1997, Kear decided he had reached a watershed. "Why did I give it up? Well, two of my friends died, one was 49, and one was 53, so you can work out what I thought from that. Both my eldest sons got divorced and there were no grandchildren, so the business would not have been carried on by the family, and that is what it is all about, isn't it? "We had also been involved in building a large bakery in Milton Keynes in conjunction with Sainsbury. But this didn't work out and I felt I had failed. "People had also expressed an interest in buying the company. There was an excellent team in place. I wanted to give them an opportunity to do their own thing. And I quite fancied sitting in the sun sipping a margarita." And so he and his family sold out. And then ­ "I was ill for about six weeks. It was reaction. Leaving the company was like losing a close member of the family. I realised I needed to work. I enjoy building, constructing and developing businesses." First buy was the Speech House Hotel in the middle of the Forest of Dean, and home to the Verdurers Court, and then the initial stake in Scotts, a company he had become acquainted with by being its landlord. His management style is straightforward, he insists. There are no great leaps of imagination required. "You must have control of the company. Then you must make sure procedures are followed, that standards are adhered to, that a structure is in place. People must know who they report to, what their responsibilities are. You must make sure they are working from a solid cash foundation, and that it's a team that can work together. It is common sense. There is no magic to it. You produce products that people want to buy, and which they see as good value." Scotts of the Dean produces traditional British favourites, premium quality fare such as chocolate fudge cake or quiche lorraine, but there are also moves to experiment with healthy eating, and ingredients such as olives and sundried tomatoes. The Kear philosophy is simple ­ things taste best when they come out of your kitchen garden. "I would prefer a piece of nice cod to a dishful of caviar, but that is my taste." He believes that there is great customer appeal in a a minimum of artificial ingredients, and in GM free and organics which are, "not just for the sake of it". "If there is no additional cost ­ with GM free very often there is no need for any additional cost and it is fairly easy to do. Even with organics, just because the ingredient has gone up, it doesn't cost any more for labour, packaging or transport. Basically, if the ingredient cost is twice as expensive that doesn't make the product twice as expensive. I think that sometimes some manufacturers add price unnecessarily just because they can illustrate that the cost of the ingredients is that much higher." Kear has not been as reckless with his money as it might appear. Each of the operations was struggling before he took over. Purchase from the liquidator in the case of Sutcliffe Meats meant low overheads ­ a sound base for reinvention. "I was able to buy the assets of the company cheap from the liquidator. So my overheads were lower than other people, which put me at an advantage." Lovells, which he took over in January this year, was another struggling operation "making lines people did not demand enough of". And what prospect is there for Milky Lunch? It is a smart offering, as stylishly presented as any countline. It looks like it could well hit the big time. And it is different. Compared with the cloying double/treble offering sweetness of much British confectionery, it is lighter fare. Even the chocolate that surrounded the snowy white nougat filling is lighter. There's now a Welsh dragon on the wrapper. Kear is undaunted by the crowded nature of the confectionery countline market, and the thought of denting the stranglehold of the countline colossi, Mars, Nestlé and Cadbury. "There's nothing more crowded than bread," he points out."Milky Lunch has been around since the 1930s but was a brand that had been allowed to disappear. "Now it is the fourth alternative after the big three. And it tastes different from anything else on the market. When I used to go to college in Cardiff, normally my purchase would be a Milky or Minty Lunch, and we'll be bringing back Minty Lunch in the future. Indeed, those two running properly would fill the factory." In fact, when Mars launched Milky Way, it had to get permission from Lovells to use Milky' in the title, he says. "We realise we haven't got the big advertising budgets of the other three. A TV campaign is unrealistic. We do have our feet on the ground. We know what our capabilities are. But we have just been listed in three multiples." Kear has a light touch to the management of his various companies. He is chairman of each, but each has its own management team, and they are left to get on with the job, with weekly costings meetings held at Yorkley. He is not one to constantly descend and tour the factory floor. "I am sure the general manager goes around the factory, I don't need to do it as well." But he likes the staff to get involved. He likes good communications. Head office today is a little grey house, the sort your granny lived in, in the Welsh borders village of Yorkley, in the Forest of Dean. There are sheep wandering around in the street. It's the house Harry was born in on a snowy St Patrick's Day in 1947. Home is now an old vicarage up the road in Clearwell. Lynne, his wife of 32 years, is an occupational therapy helper at a local hospital. Most of the family live locally. He has three sons, the eldest, 31 and just remarried, the youngest just 18, one daughter, and now a granddaughter, Amelia. Asked the usual hobbies/interests question, he stresses that his businesses are his hobby, and one he enjoys. "I am lucky in that I have the means to enjoy my hobbies ­ my businesses. But he likes swimming, EastEnders, and the local Rotary Club. He is very enthusiastic about developing his golf club, bought in December '99 and now undergoing a £6m development to include virtual reality driving ranges so any course in the world can be played, an indoor academy, and an internet cafe, all under a grass roof. But there's a surprise hobby ­ his passion for riding his motorbike (a Honda VFR) on jaunts around Wales, possibly as far as Aberystwyth. "I woke up in my mid 40s ­ I thought before I die I want to do certain things. That was one of them. I like the privacy ­ it's not a question of solitude but of privacy. Nobody can ring me on the mobile, and I don't like taking anyone on the back, so I am alone. I like the time to see things you wouldn't if you were in the car, and to think." About which business to buy next, perhaps. {{PROFILE }}