When we bought the business in 2000, it was a tiny salad packer. We saw an opportunity to focus on small customers in foodservice, while other salad suppliers were concentrating on retail. Our reputation grew on the back of our flexibility, offering small volumes of product that the big suppliers are not set up to handle, and we found our niche. When MD Stephen Rogers and I bought the business, it was turning over £300,000. We grew sales to £1.4m by the following year and now, seven years later, sales are probably going to be £18m. Despite our focus on foodservice, about 25% of our sales are in retail and we would like to develop that side of our business. Along with another supplier, we provide the whole of The Co-operative Group's bagged salads nationally. And we are looking at supplying our own branded Lancashire-grown salad in the north of England. We have always tried to give our retail accounts something different, and to focus on the premium end of the market. We are always looking for new leaves, new dressings or sachets of interesting products to add to the salads. The latest idea is adding seeds such as pumpkin, sunflower and linseed to prepared leaf salads. From just one production line we now have eight lines and have just installed the first salad drying equipment of its kind in the UK, at a cost of £750,000. This dries leaves using an infrared process that doesn't touch the leaves, offering an enhanced shelf life. It is important to be very responsive to new trends and changes in attitude. Salad is a very short life product, and we are constantly working to take any delays out of the supply chain to deliver the best possible, freshest product in the shortest possible time. We quickly outgrew our original site in Manchester and moved to Skelmersdale, Lancashire, in 2001, from where we have just moved again to a new multimillion pound premises in the same town. In the UK, we have growers in three key geographic areas - Lancashire, Spalding and the Vale of Evesham, which provide us with security of supply. In winter we have growers in France, Spain and Italy, and are looking further afield to Morocco and Tunisia. Traceability in salads is vital, and we use only suppliers who have been audited by our technical team. This means we have full traceability right down to the metre of the field where the product came from.

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