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TWST: Can we begin with an introduction and brief historical sketch of Northern Foods (London: NFDS.L)?

Mr. Christie: Northern Foods started out in the late 1930s as a regional dairy company in the U.K., and grew quite rapidly through to the late 60s by acquiring other dairy companies. In the early 70s, we started to branch out into other sorts of food manufacturing areas and particularly chilled food, which has proved to be a very big growth area. And it was chilled food in the U.K. that really fueled all the rest of the growth from the early 70s through to the present day, to such an extent that by 1998 the food side represented two-thirds of the company. At that point, we floated the dairy business off on to the stock markets as a separate listed plc called Express Dairies. We are a pure food group. We concentrate on chilled, but we also have some other interest in other food sectors of the U.K. such as biscuits and frozen food. We are the biggest chilled food player in the U.K., and since the U.K. is the biggest chilled food market in the world, by default we are the biggest chilled food company in the world in terms of added value chilled food. In the U.K. the market is particularly developed because it is a densely populated island, with a very good transport infrastructure, and all the retailers have built a lot of warehouses that can handle chilled and very rapid distribution. So it has taken off here in a big a way whilst other countries have much more ambient or frozen food. Chilled food has a very short shelf life and we make many products every day of the week and shift them out to retailers immediately. Our biggest customers are the top five chilled food retailers in the U.K. -- Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury, Safeway, and Asda. They are our target customers, probably representing about 80% of our U.K. retail sales, which is the major part of our £1.4 billion turnover. We operate only in the U.K. and Ireland, partly because the chilled food market is less developed in other parts of the world. While maybe quite a big opportunity in the future, they are very undeveloped at the moment and there could be quite a lot of pain before gains. We would rather be a second mover in some of those markets. And that is talking long-term because we see lots of opportunity for us in the U.K. and that's where we are going for the time being. The food market in general is all about hunting for growth and chilled food in the UK is a growing market. The food market as a whole is not an international market, there are very big national markets the world over and most of the food made in the U.K. is eaten in the U.K., the same in America, France, Germany, and so on. They are really very big islands with their own marketplaces.

TWST: What is your overall game plan for the 12-24 months? How would you like to see the company develop?

Mr. Christie: It is not rocket science. Food is food. We are always looking for growth; things like healthy eating, snacking, convenience, all these things that are continuing to be a powerful trends in the marketplace. So we need to follow which products are in the wining products sector. We will stick with our major retail buyers because they have been growing their distribution channels, at the expense of some of the smaller players. We invested pretty heavily over the last few years in our plants and we are well invested compared to all of our competitors really. So, a lot of it is about really making our kit coming to life, but it is also in the learning curve. So in the next couple of years, I think we owe our investors a return on the investments we have made.

TWST: What are your thoughts on inorganic growth? Is that an opportunity you are keeping an eye on?

Mr. Christie: We have always been great fans of organic growth. We see that as a higher quality of growth than just buying your way forward. And also, being slightly arrogant, buying our competitors’ tired old assets isn't the greatest way of taking us forward if we are at the leading edge of food. Now, that is over-simplifying it and there are quite often the odd opportunity. So I think you will see a mixture of organic growth, investing in ourselves overtime, but occasionally in certain product sectors we tend to do steady but smallish acquisitions – rifle short, small sub-sectors of the market that we want to be in or to take competitors out.