Q&A with Jonathan Lill, CEO of BBF Food and Beverage Sector Insights

Tell us about yourself, your background and career to date. How did you arrive at BBF?

I have always had a passion for food manufacturing. I started my journey at Northern Foods in their finance team gaining a valuable grounding across multiple food categories in both branded and private label. I loved the challenge of providing consumers with the quality food they wanted but at prices they could afford, and seeing the innovation in the category.

I later joined Morrisons and broadened my experience with exposure to acquisitions as M&A Director and subsequently a move into operations heading up the bakery and seafood divisions. I loved the adrenaline rush from navigating the complexity of transactions and being able to drive positive impact through leading an expanding number of Morrisons’ manufacturing divisions.

When the opportunity to join BBF came along, it was a job I could not turn down as it allowed me to take all of my historical experience and apply it in the sector that I love and in the lead CEO role.

You have been on an incredible journey with BBF, can you give a brief overview of that journey so far?

At BBF, we have created the largest private label ambient cake manufacturer in the UK. The journey has included everything from organic sales growth and operational performance improvement to large scale automation projects and transformational acquisitions.

When Endless acquired the business, BBF had sales of £60million and we had to initially focus on operational improvement and driving sales growth. However, it wasn’t long before we had the opportunity to turbo charge performance with the acquisition of our Hull facility in 2018. This doubled the size of the business overnight and by applying the same principles that we had in the core business, we successfully leveraged the financial performance across the group.

In 2021, we seized on another opportunity to expand our pastry offering with the acquisition of Sargents Bakery. This was at the same time food inflation started to accelerate…….not great timing! However, we quickly consolidated the volume into our existing operational footprint thereby allowing us to drive operational efficiently as well as product diversification.

Overall, we have therefore taken three good businesses and combined them to create a market leading group, delivering over £240 million in sales…….but we are not done yet.

M&A has been a key feature of performance growth at BBF. What key positives do you believe the acquisitions brought to the group?

Scale is a real advantage in food manufacturing. The acquisition of our Hull site completely transformed the business. The site is the largest, and most modern, purpose-built cake factory in the UK and it gave BBF the ability to completely overhaul the scale at which it operates.

Scale wasn’t the only benefit though. The acquisition also brought significant operational synergies and the ability to consolidate and professionalise central functions, thereby allowing us to deliver robust underlying performance improvements.

Sargents was a smaller acquisition. However, it increased our market share in pastry and our importance to customers in that category. It also added new product capability and offered more choice to customers.

You have navigated a number of industry wide challenges in recent years, from the Covid 19 pandemic, to supply chain disruption and a high inflationary environment. What are your key takeaways and learnings from this period?

It’s fair to say I have a few more grey hairs today (and less of it) than I did a couple of years ago!

During the pandemic, our breadth of product range helped us to navigate the rapid changes in consumer behaviour and our employees were just fantastic and gave us the flexibility we needed to adapt to the changing demands.

Over our early years we also spent time strengthening our central support functions which meant that we were very close to our supply base when the challenges hit. This has allowed us to successfully navigate the raw material supply chain disruption and inflation over the last three years.

If there were three points I would take away from the last three years they would be:

1. Always maintain strong, open and transparent partnerships with your customers;
2. Ensure great teamwork – working quickly, flexibly, and collaboratively – to manage difficult circumstances; and
3. Take tough decisions early during times of crisis, don’t wait!

What do you see in the future for BBF?

We have delivered very strong growth over the last 8 years, growing turnover from around £60m to nearly £240m and created a business with a very exciting future. There is lots to do, not just through more organic and M&A growth, but by entering new product channels, categories and even new geographies……watch this space.