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business success in association with
A co-operative approach delivers business success
Well-known and respected for its community values and Fairtrade principles, The Southern Co-operative Group is on a strong growth trajectory, creating some 400 jobs year-on-year across the region and expanding into new stores and new sectors
Although the heart of its business is across Hampshire and Sussex – its headquarters is in Portsmouth – the group is expanding east into Kent and west into Dorset and Devon. It currently has more than 170 retail stores and employs around 3,600 people.
At the end of September a new store in Taunton became the latest to open its doors and by the end of January, The Southern Co-operative expects to have opened 20 new stores and carried out a refurbishment programme on a further 44 in the past 12 months alone.
Add this alongside its venture into the burgeoning café culture with the opening of its first Starbucks franchise in London Road, Southampton, and the growth of its funeral services, and you can see why group financial controller Paul Rodford says business is good.
“We have three core strategies – to improve efficiency in our day-to-day businesses through the use of better systems, better training and smarter ways of working; to expand our existing business sectors and also look at new ones; and finally to make absolutely sure we keep the focus on the uniqueness of our local brand,“ he said.
“We are very much a community-based business owned by our members. We take great pride in the way we work with local communities and it’s really important to us to make sure we give back to our members and those who support us.“
Rodford says the group is always keen to identify new business opportunities which fit with the Co-operative brand, which is why earlier this year it bought a natural burial site in Brighton in order to complement its Funeralcare business.
It will also shortly see the opening of a new crematorium at Havant, the first wholly-owned by The Southern Co-operative, and designed to meet an increasing need across the region.
Until the beginning of 2013, the group’s expansion activities had all been supported by internal funding, but Rodford says as the finance
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team started to look at plans for the next three years, the need for external investment was recognised.
“We knew that if we were to continue to grow at the rate we had been doing and that we wanted to, then we required funding support, which is when we reached out and started talking to a number of banks, one of which was Barclays,“ he said.
“When we’re competing for new locations with the convenience store arm of the larger supermarkets our advantage is that we can react quicker and be more flexible in our decision making process, which works for us and works for developers too.
“We needed a bank which could do the same and it was Barclays who came back within two weeks and said they were happy to provide us with a loan facility worth £15 million over three years.
“They listened to us, their pricing was competitive, they were helpful and they delivered, which has continued to be the case. What they seem to have, compared to other banks, is people at a local level who can either take decisions or get decisions made quickly and we were massively impressed by that.“
The two began working together in the Spring and Rodford says as time has gone on, he has also recognised that the bank shares similar values in trying to work with local communities and support local businesses.
In the short term, the investment has enabled The Southern Co-operative to complete its
funding of the crematorium project and press ahead with additional openings and refurbishment projects, while looking further ahead, Rodford says the money will be used for future expansion.
Tony Milman, relationship director for Barclays’ Solent and Dorset Larger Corporate team, who has been working on the project, said: “The Southern Co-operative is a well-established and highly-successful business operating in the very heart of our region.
“We always invest time with businesses to really understand their needs and objectives in order to provide the best solutions, while working to their timescales.
“They also make a point of supporting local communities and suppliers, many of whom are also our customers. We like to give something back too and recently we were delighted to raise over £24,000 for local charity, Naomi House.
“We very much look forward to a long and successful partnership.“
Details:
Paul Rodford 07713-313334
PaulRodford@southerncoops.co.uk www.thesouthernco-operative.co.uk
Tony Milman 07900 -736705
anthony.milman@
barclays.com www.barclays.com/corporatebanking
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – NOVEMBER 2013
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