Farmer ploughs ahead to keep up locally grown supply

Tuesday 07 April 2015

A Trinity farmer is ploughing ahead with plans to keep up the supply of local veg to shops when Amal-Grow closes this summer - and he's in talks about saving 30 of the 49 jobs due to go when the growers' shut up shop.

Charlie Gallichan of Woodside Farm has been in talks with the company about taking over the business in July and has come up with a plan to work with and help other growers in the Island.

When Amal-Grow announced its plan to close last month, the head of the Co-op in the Channel Islands, Colin Macleod suggested local farmers come together to form a co-operative.

Mr Gallichan will lead the field and is planning to build a packing operation at his farm. It should reduce overheads and mean they’ll be able to offer locally produced competitively-priced veg to the supermarkets.

He said: “We don’t want to grow everything, it's much better if the growers play to their own strength, let them grow what they are good at and we’ll work with them as the link between them and the customer.”

The idea already has the support of Environment Minister Steve Luce but Mr Gallichan is waiting to hear whether he'll get the financial support from the States he needs to go ahead with it.

If he does, he’ll have a lot of work on his hands to get it all up and running by July.

He said: “Subject to government support, we’ve got to build packing facilities to the right standard, making sure all our cropping programmes are at the right level and work on re-designing all the packaging going into shops.

“Our goal is to provide a seamless transition from Amal-Grow to Woodside and Amal-Grow are very supportive of the goal to hand the business over. Customers shouldn’t notice too much difference, there won’t be a massive gap in supply.”

St John-based Amal-Grow was founded in 1976 by farmer Tony Le Brun, who sold it to Albert Barlett and Sons in 2013.