Does Tetleys description as a tea expert indicate prospective assistance to others?
My team’s responsibility is to produce the best tea at the lowest price. The easiest way to have profitability is to run the factory at the base load with branded products and when we have spare capacity, load it with private labels. However, it would be the wrong thing to do. What makes a brand unique is the product and packaging. What keeps you ahead of competition and private labels is the way you innovate. That costs money. In the UK, getting to soft packaging from hard packaging meant retuning the factory. That cost money plus advertisements – about 50 million. When you have to recover that, you don’t want anyone else to have that differentiation. If we had a big contract with Tescos while we had invested in the differentiation, they would probably tell us – we want that as well. Do we say no and risk them pulling out of the contract or say yes and give away our innovation? For long-term financial objective, it is better that we don’t have private labels. Getting tea to the retail
