Wag States £38m Taste of Success for Welsh Food & Drink

I received this missive from Wag informing me that at BlasCymru/TasteWales 2023 there was a record high for Welsh food and drink businesses as confirmed and potential sales reached £38 million.

The biennial event, which took place over two full days at the International Convention Centre (ICCW) in Newport, saw
in total, 122 Welsh food and drink businesses taking part in the event, accompanied by 15 Rising Stars, new Welsh business start-ups who have developed their business in the last 12 months.

There were 276 trade buyers, including 30 international buyers from 11 countries.

The 2023 event also showcased 14 protected Welsh products with Geographical Indication (GI) status such as PGI Welsh Lamb and PGI Welsh Beef plus 203 new products were showcased.

The first of my queries is that I’m told 2,100 meetings took place over the two day event, which is an enormous number of meetings. With each meeting having a 20 minute slot then this figure is physically possible. But my second query and a further confusion for me was the figure of confirmed and potential sales that supposedly reached £38m, from the 122 businesses in attendance. That means that each business, including the 15 Rising Stars, averaged £277k worth of orders. Really? I’d love to see 12months on those sales figures confirmed.

But there are other figures that I have to be question. In a Welsh Government press release issued in December 2022 it says:

Welsh food and drink exports hit a record high in 2021 reaching £641m, with Wales also seeing the largest percentage increase in the value of food and drink exports out of the four UK nations between 2020 and 2021 rising by £89 million.

Having built a reputation for quality and authenticity in its export offer, the Welsh food and drink sector’s supply chain continues to thrive, reaching a turnover of £23 billion in 2021.

Rather than going through these figures stage by stage, the above figures mean that every household in the UK (including those in deepest Kent or even on the Isles of Skye and the outer Hebrides) each purchase £15.30 worth of Welsh Food and Drink every single week throughout the year. I appreciate this doesn’t sound a lot, but just look at your weekly shopping basket, how much of that is Welsh? This is important, especially when Farmers’ Markets and Farm Shop expenditure is not accurately counted in the figures from the Welsh Government.

To help let me refer you to a previous post www.welshfoodbites.co.uk/how-is-the-gross-value-of-food-and-drink-in-wales-measured/ were the Welsh Government admits that it does not keep its own statistical figures. Again the question is why not?

• According to the ONS there were 28.1 million households in the UK in 2021
• The £15.30 is calculated by taking the £23B less the exports divided by the number of households and further divided by 52 for the weeks in a year.

I typed Taste Wales into Google today 30^th January and what turns up – Sorry this page doesn’t exist anymore. Well Wag why can’t I find it on Google?  That doesn’t make any sense at all to me.