Next Stop, Antarctica – Market Matters

So you think business is tough? – try running a market garden on an island where the climate is nine months of winter and three months of bad weather and you’re 8,000 miles away from your export market. Port Stanley in the Falklands, for instance. To anyone who’s not Welsh or brought up in middle of the South Atlantic it’s pretty depressing but after a certain amount of unpleasantness with the Argentineans, Tim and Jan Miller decided to get out of sheep farming and develop Stanley Growers, F.I. (population 2,000’ish, plus a few hundred thousand penguins). The Falklands are not the easiest of places to visit but if you like wildlife, fishing and zero pollution it’s well worth the effort. Watch out for the ozone hole though – your nose might drop off.

A market garden in the Falklands? – not a business plan that can be sold easily to the bank manager you may think. Quite so – there’s only one bank on the Islands and no cashpoints. But after 1982 HM Government got it right and set up the Falkland Islands Development Company to sell off big chunks of the local economy to entrepreneurs and break the stranglehold of the sheep-farming Falkland Islands Company.

After ’82 the Falklands found itself all of a sudden hosting a garrison of 1,000 Bootnecks (Marines), Squaddies (Army) and Crabs (RAF) and the brightest Bennies (Islanders) saw some possibilities. Stanley Growers was originally an FIDC idea but Tim decided to chuck in his sheep farm and his own, small market garden to ‘give it a go’ as they say in Oz. He took over running the Company in 1988 and in 1992 his wife, Jan opened a shop on the site that now includes a cafe, pet centre, gift shop and fresh cut flower service. Not quite Wyevale admittedly, but pretty close. In 1996 they took another plunge and bought the company from the FIDC and invested heavily in polytunnels, hydroponics and a plant nursery.

The breakthrough for the business came when they landed the contract to supply the MoD garrison. It took years to complete because Tim had to comply with EU standards (no bendy cucumbers or odd-shaped carrots) even though the bloody bureaucrats in Brussels were 8,000 miles way and fresh produce was being air- freighted into the garrison via Ascension Island. Then he spotted the next opportunity – cruise ships stopping-off on their way to show the Antarctic to fat Americans. They didn’t complain too much about prices but did want top quality fresh produce, and that was what Stanley Growers could deliver in the South Atlantic.

Then there was the wholesaling business – importing a couple of tons of fresh fruit a week from Chile. It’s a pity the next door neighbours don’t want to trade with Las Malvinas, as they still insist on calling them.

But the cleverest bit was Tim’s deal to buy the ‘ullage’ (short-dated fuel, believe it or not) from the garrison and Royal Navy. That means he can heat his polytunnels at a reasonable cost and the MoD don’t have to ship it back to the UK. Add a few special local factors, like very few plant pests on the Falklands and the business has expanded quite nicely thank you.

Stanley Growers is a fine example of someone who saw an opportunity and has built up a business from an unpromising start by hard work and determination. There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

Jonathan Owen is a director of Quarterbridge Project Management – a specialist consultancy providing business advice and design services to market owners and trade associations. He has a keen interest in the politics of retailing, growing vegetables and eating well.

Market Matters, published in Market Trade News publication