News - Finlays

4
View from the MD’s Desk Rupert Hogg
The decision to make this move has not
been taken lightly. Finlays is an old and
venerable Scottish company, established
as long ago as 1750, only five years after
the battle of Culloden. During much of
the ensuing 250 years the company
has played a prominent role in the civic
and commercial affairs of the city of
Glasgow as well in the communities of
Catrine and Deanston.
However, we have not had a Scottish-based
operational business for a decade and the
larger of those former businesses were
closed or sold in the decades prior
to that. It is also the case that many of
the smaller businesses that were started
during the same period, such as Flowers,
Tea Trading and Tea Extracts, have grown or
evolved considerably to become significant
businesses in their own right and have real
prospects for rapid growth.
First steps into China: the new joint venture tea extracts
plant at Nanjing takes shape. Tony Barcroft (r) is seen here
with George Chan (l), Director Finlays Hong Kong and
David Jiang, Chairman of the Damin International Group.
There is much going on at present, both within James Finlay
and the broader markets in which we operate; I will make
mention of some of these trends later in this article. However,
without question, the most important piece of news that I have
to report is tinged with sadness: that is the fact that the Head
Office and Glasgow operations of James Finlay Limited are to
move to London as of the middle of next year.
These businesses are now led and managed
from London. In addition, as some of the
articles in this edition may illustrate, many
of the competitive and consumer trends to
which the individual group companies
identify and respond now require a far
greater degree of coordination across the
Group than has been the case in the past.
Thus, the driving thrust behind the decision
to move the head office closer to some of
our subsidiaries is underpinned by the
desire to improve our ability to coordinate
and communicate internally and therefore
to improve the products and services that
we offer our customers externally.
That is the rationale behind the decision to
move the head office to London and that is
what we intend to achieve by so doing.
However, none of this diminishes the fact
that the move represents the end of an era
and that, more importantly, it is likely to
mean redundancies for the great majority of
the current team that have worked in the
Glasgow office and contributed so much to
Finlays. I can only state that the Directors
and Shareholders appreciate this and that
the writing of this article offers me the
opportunity to publicly thank those
concerned for that contribution and for
their continued support until the transition
is complete.
I hope that the reader will notice that this
edition of Finlays Magazine has a new look
and that the traditional tea leaf motif has
evolved too. These changes result from a
re-branding exercise that is described
elsewhere in this edition (page 6).
While the outcome may be visually striking,
the exercise itself is but a logical step in a
more fundamental process of change
within Finlays.
The first objective has been to move
towards a functional and divisional
structure and away from the Group’s
traditional geographic basis. This process is
incomplete as yet but, as an indication,
several of the subsidiary businesses now
have Managing Directors who are
responsible for all of the activities of their
division on a global basis, a much simpler
and more customer-focused proposition.
The second objective, to which I have
already referred, comes from within the
Group itself: the need for the Group to be
more cohesive and coordinated in its
approach to the market and to our major
customers on issues that impact us all and
which are important to that wider customer
base. From a communications perspective,
the inference of such trends is obvious; we
need a common look and feel across the
Group and we need to become more
uniform and consistent in the way in which
we present ourselves. I believe that this
exercise has managed that evolution well
and injected a desirable dose of freshness
and modernity to our ‘look’ in the process.
Finlays has a fine record for social and
environmental responsibility; I hope that
what we do on the ground demonstrates
that there is real substance behind such a
claim. To a great degree, the Fairtrade
accreditation scheme, of which many
consumers are aware, acknowledges these
credentials. All of our flower farms and
some of our tea estates have either obtained
or are in the final stages of obtaining