Too many slices and the loaf disappears: Is this the end of Australian FMCG?

Too many slices and the loaf disappears: Is this the end of Australian FMCG?

Nov 16, 2017 | Change, Governance, Leadership, rant, Strategy

What the hell have we been thinking?

Some time ago I mused that the slow death of the Australian FMCG manufacturing base was akin to nicking a slice off a cut loaf, one at a time. At any specific time you do not really notice the difference, but looked at over a period, the loss is obvious.

Well, it seems that someone nicked the Food industry loaf, and all we have left are the crumbs.

A report released last week by Food Navigator reveals Australia’s top 10 FMCG suppliers.

Not one of them is  owned by Australians.

Let me say that again: Not one is owned by Australians!

Over time I have worked for two businesses on the list, and at the time, both were aggressively and proudly Australian, wearing the national flag on their shoulders, and in their advertising, and both were in their way successful despite themselves.  However, dismay at some of the nonsense that went on is a primary reason I have been self-employed for the last 22 years.

I struggle to think of many substantial companies still domestically owned, Bega, Patties Pies and San Remo come to mind, but we are then down to the minnows.

All these multinationals will rightly say that they pay lots of taxes, employ lots of Australians, both directly, and indirectly, and that they have Australian best interests at heart.

Bullshit.

It is true they employ many people, and it is true that they pay unavoidable taxes, like GST, local government rates, and collect from their employees PAYE, but do they carry the full weight of their ‘moral obligations’ to the communities they live in via income taxes?  The reality is that have their own best interests at heart, or at least, most of them do. Transfer pricing, creative funding, corporate domicile on low tax environments, and all the rest of the shenanigans revealed again, by the Paradise Papers in the past weeks or so are widespread. It should not come as a surprise to anybody when these large companies make decisions in their interests, not in those of Australians and Australia.

This is like renting a house. You are allowed to live in it, under certain conditions,  but you have no control over the property, someone else makes all the key decisions. The renters best interests are not a factor in the determination of the owners best interests.

We tell ourselves we are a food bowl, and we are, but without any access to the markets at all. We no longer even have any brands for direct contact with consumers (Vegemite is a rare example, purchased back from Kraft last year by Bega, hooray). We are therefore nothing other than commodity suppliers in a price driven world. Not being a low cost producer, without the umbrella of brands and control of the operational infrastructure that can deliver genuine value to consumers, we are inevitably going to be screwed, with the benefits of ownership exported.

Coles and Woollies have ‘conspired’ to destroy the domestic suppliers and their brands by limiting ranges, replacing proprietary brands with house brands, sourced from wherever is convenient and cheap, realising short term margin gains at the expense of long term prosperity, both theirs and that of the communities they serve.  They have also lost in the process the cover of brands at a time where there is a huge retail  disruption looming: Amazon, online ordering, AI, ‘Ubered’ home delivery, and all the rest.

It seems to me the two retail gorillas will now reap the poison crop they sowed as an outcome of their short term,  one dimensional and absolutely unimaginative strategies.  Taking on Amazon with that mind-set is suicide, as if we know anything about Amazon, it is that they do not play by the existing rules. They make up a new set, and  the incumbents are left to wonder in their wake.

Food manufacturing used to be our biggest manufacturing industry, and we have given it away, or at least the benefits of ownership of it, for next to nothing. It is not even as if for the most part the interlopers paid a premium for control, they just waited until the numbers were so crap that they could take it for a song. The most recent example, Murray Goulbourn is a classic case in point, as are two of my previous corporate employers, Dairy Farmers and Goodman Fielder. Both reasonably large, reasonably successful businesses stuffed by poor management decisions until they became unsuccessful smaller ones, that could be scooped up out of Multinational petty cash.

Our kids will pay a heavy price for the short sighted and incompetent management of their fathers and grandfathers. (Cannot help wondering if their grandmothers and mothers would  have done a better job)

Our so called leaders mumble abut populist causes, ignoring the difficult and challenging long term choices that need to be made, which are usually by definition, not populist. It took a crisis to get them to consider ‘power policy’ in their quiet, moments when not looking after their own jobs in the face of failing to check if they are technically Australians, but it is 25 years too late. ‘Manufacturing policy’ discussions are pretty thin on the ground, now the motor industry has folded their tents, and more specific ‘Food Industry Policy’ discussions are as rare as sightings of the  Tasmanian tiger. Rumoured but carrying very little real credibility.

There has been very little of much value about any policy setting that might help us control and leverage our own agricultural and manufacturing capabilities that would enable us to feel confident we can feed ourselves, and others in the region into the medium term. The horse has bolted, and we are left with a pile of shit in the stables.

Sadly, few in power seem to be too concerned with the demise of our ability to control our own food supply, value adding and distribution.

If nothing else, we may have discovered an innovative solution to the national obesity problem.

 

5 realities we Australians should  be thinking about.

5 realities we Australians should  be thinking about.

Nov 10, 2017 | Change, Governance, Leadership, rant

This is a personal rant motivated by the continuing  sight of politicians pontificating about stuff that does not matter and either ignoring much of the stuff that does, or presenting as facts, suppositions and bullshit that is supposed to make their case and cover their culpability for inaction  and stupidity.

Not a bad start.

However, much as it is good to blame someone else for the things frustrating the hell out of us, it is not entirely their fault.

We live, for those who have not noticed, well into the 21st century.  Our institutions were designed and evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most would accept the notion that change has never been faster or more all-encompassing as in the last 20 years, so why are we surprised that  the institutions have failed to keep up?

So, let me just have a look at an area I am at least partially familiar with after 40 years of operating in it, the current state of small business, and the relationship they have to the economic well being of the communities they serve. Nothing about the stupid non binding vote on same sex marriage, nothing about the nonsense of setting out to build submarines of a hybrid and bodgied  design over which we have no control, and cannot crew anyway in the name of saving a few government seats, nothing about the hysteria and confusion about what is means to be an Australian citizen, …. Need I go on?

There is a general recognition that small business is the backbone of the economy, employing 5 million (the data is 2 years old, which tells you something about our institutions) people and contributing billions in tax, in other words, they carry the weight of the economy, but the statistics do not tell us all we need to understand, as they, like everything else, were designed to give information on the 20th century economy, not the 21st.

A few examples.

  • Micro entrepreneurs are everywhere. There are hundreds of thousands of Australians making a bit on the side via eBay, Etsy, and Amazon, buying and selling stuff that never gets counted. This is a new breed of entrepreneur, and they are operating almost under the radar. The tools that enable this sort of activity did not exist 20 years ago.

 

  • The net is ubiquitous. The enabler of the previous point, the net, has also enabled thousands to start new businesses, often on the side, simply because the cost of failure is now so low, as the cost of entry has shrunk to a fraction of what it was 20 years ago. Many of these businesses fail, perhaps even most,  but that no longer means penury for  the entrepreneur, he/she simply picks up and has another go. Few of my children’s friends and colleagues expect to work for a corporation all their lives, then retire, as my generation did, although many of us are radically rethinking that at  the moment. They expect to get some experience, at somebody else’s expense, then  leverage that into their own business.

 

  • The tax base is hiding. The goldmine of PAYE tax is rapidly disappearing, as individuals go into business for themselves, rather than working for corporations, and often, as well as working for corporations. This gives access to all sorts of reasonable deductions of expenses not available to a PAYE employee. While we have a spending problem in this country, pollies spending to get themselves re-elected, or massively overspending to correct the failures of the past (look at the Sydney road and rail systems for any evidence you need of this) we also have a revenue problem. The GST was a sensible step, compromised as it was, and is, by politics, but the whole tax and welfare system needs a radical rethink, which simply will not happen until we are faced with a true crisis. On top of all that is the simple reality that paying tax has become optional for the large multinationals around the globe who have the reach and resources to structure their affairs towards minimisation. it may not be illegal, but it sure as hell is immoral, and the price we ‘ordinary taxpayers’ are all paying, and will continue to pay unless we, and other international tax institutions figure out that we need to collaborate to stop it. Perhaps we should summon the ghost of Kerry Packer to deliver another broadside.

 

  • Baby Boomers are not ‘retiring’. The so called baby boomers, of which I am one, are not retiring, they may be cutting back, but often they are starting businesses, setting out to use their experience and lifetime wisdom in some useful way. The retirement age is a function of a world where we worked physically much harder than we do now, and the body gave out just before we kicked the bucket. Now the body is not giving out, and when it does we go in for renovations to keep on going. The  only bucket we are interested in  is the list of stuff we still want to do.

 

  • Manufacturing is not dead, it has just changed shape. The 20th century manufacturing model is dead, but is being replaced by a highly technical, globally connected combination of technologies from electronics to additive and 3D manufacturing, which employs just a few highly qualified and motivated people. Yet, our industrial institutions still believe we have big factories full of people doing repetitive tasks. Worse still, our education systems are still geared to mass production of kids who can recite rather than think, and this is despite the disastrous rebalancing of education towards university at the expense of trade skills. While we need less people digging holes, we need more who can design, fabricate, and operate a complex piece of machinery or electronics, and we are not training them in sufficient numbers, or giving them the self belief that valuable and rewarding work does not necessarily equate to sitting in an air conditioned office driving a mouse.

 

All of this simply means that opportunity multiplies, as the institutions that supposedly govern us sit idly by at best, but get in the way most of the time, more often than not by accident. The status quo for which they were designed has been chucked out, trashed, and is significantly irrelevant now, rapidly becoming utterly irrelevant  and a wet blanket on progress without real and immediate change.

 

The tragedy of ‘doing a Fairfax’

The tragedy of ‘doing a Fairfax’

Apr 7, 2017 | Leadership, rant, Strategy

The once great Fairfax media empire, once a fearless protector of our democracy, on Wednesday announced a further rationalisation in an effort to save $30 million.

This is another in a long list of ‘Adjustments’ and programs which have  become code for making editorial staff redundant.

The Fairfax announcement of 30 million in cost savings, promises to turn the Fairfax publications into  ‘genuine digital businesses with the capabilities and cost base to best operate in the current media environment’.

This is code for no more news that we should be hearing, and more mindless nonsense about footballers hammies, bar brawls, and steamy affairs with soapie stars.

How do such stories give us the intellectual depth and investigative rigour needed to keep the forces of greed, self indulgence, neglect, corruption, and sheer criminality  at bay?

From a commercial perspective, it is reasonable that a private organisation follow the market that it needs to service in order to survive, but that survival, assuming it happens in this case, comes at a long term cost to the community it serves.

Lord Beaverbrook, amongst many colourful quotes is credited with something like ‘my papers give the public what they want, which is not necessarily what they need’.  At this time, never has a truer word been said.

In 2016 Fairfax saved $15 million by cutting 120 editorial jobs, on top of the 1200 saved in 2012, which included the closure of a number of its printing operations. Saving another $30 million will see the cleaner writing the editorials.

If this was just another business going broke, and struggling for its identity and survival in a disrupted industry, it would be one thing, but this is Fairfax, a group that for 180 years has kept those who seek to govern us honest, or as honest as they can be, and has exposed the corrupt and venal amongst us to fearless scrutiny.

It has been clear for decades that people bought newspapers for the classified advertising, the cars, jobs and houses being sold turned into a ‘river of gold’ for the newspaper proprietors, who invested a bit of the river back into the public good.

Now the rivers have dried up, the public good is being left to fend for itself.

Therein lies the tragedy, it can’t without help.

In the absence of an accountable and fearless press, we are all in trouble.

Without Fairfax, and the determination and commitment of Kate McClymont and others like her, we would not have the current  Royal Commission into the Institutional abuse of our kids, and Eddie Obeid and his cronies, like Sir Lunchalot would still be running the state for their personal benefit, to our collective cost.

The lesson for the rest of us is that you ignore the tsunami of change that is coming at you at your peril, and collectively unless we find ways to replace that which is lost in some way, our children will pay a very big price indeed.