Barney Mauleverer: Brand Britain’s food & drink ambassador

I should be on a beach,” Barney Mauleverer laughs, roasting in his home office during May’s sweltering heatwave. And after selling his Fuel10K brand for £34m to Premier Foods in 2023, he would have been forgiven for jacking it all in.

But Mauleverer’s energy and passion for the industry remains undimmed. Hence stepping back into the fray in January to take over the largely dormant Food & Drink Exporters Association, with a bold plan to boost the UK’s food and drink exports by £10bn to £35bn by 2035.

So what’s inspired Mauleverer to come out of semi-retirement? And what’s the plan?

Likes a challenge

Since selling his business, Mauleverer hasn’t exactly been on the beach, but he has at least been able to satisfy his obvious sense of adventure, taking part last year in a ‘four season’ challenge across a desert, jungle, mountain and ice – via a trek to the South Pole on skis.

And his innate curiosity and entrepreneurial zeal has also been channelled into setting up the Future of Food competition in 2024, to reward and support the next generation of food sector entrepreneurs.

But now Mauleverer has set himself an even bigger challenge. After the all-consuming “chaos” of the past six years, Mauleverer wants to “look up” and help “turn around the fortunes of our industry”.

“We’ve been trailing at £25bn exports since 2019 and lost about £5bn with inflation, so we have a big goal, something to aim for on a 10-year horizon,” he says.

His background has certainly given Mauleverer ideal training. As employee number seven at Innocent, “my first job, dressed up as a cow,” he recalls, “was to go and sell smoothies to anyone that might wear a kilt”. “Basically anywhere that wasn’t London.”

His first export market was Ireland, and he then ran the sales team that took the business into mainland Europe before setting up on his own, as an agent for the brand, while adding other startups.

That venture ultimately evolved into Mauleverer’s Fresh Marketing sales and distribution business, which he set up with Alex Matheson. As well as clients such as Eat Natural, Nakd, Candy Kittens, Burts, Lizi’s and Deliciously Ella, in 2007 it moved into manufacturing, “making a lot of mistakes” with short-lived popcorn, coconut water, soup and yoghurt drink brands.

It was on a trip to US trade show Expo West that Fuel10K was born, the result of an “opportunistic” conversation with a Tesco buyer who was looking to introduce “the Red Bull of granola” and asked if there were any brands that could fit the brief. “We said: ‘We think we might have one – could we have a go?’”

The rest is history. Some 12 years later, “ready to come up for air” Fuel10K was sold to Premier Foods. A year later Mauleverer also sold his interest in Fresh Marketing. And it was while attempting to step down from the committee running the FDEA that Mauleverer was given a proposition to take it over.

He took it on “under the proviso that we were able to rip it up and start again,” he says. And he’s put his money where his mouth is, committing to fund the trade association out of his own pocket until it can stand on its own two feet financially.

Export Growth Taskforce

The plan is quickly taking shape. He’s formed a ‘35 by 35’ Export Growth Taskforce, an industry-led, government-supported plan to unite exporters from all four nations and across all food and drink categories, underpinned by a sector report for each. That’s entailed conducting 159 primary interviews to determine “what exporters want as opposed to what the government thinks”, and has identified the top 20 sector interventions, as well as a “hitlist of the top 10 things the government can help it to do”, which it will present to exporters at a conference next week.

“My ultimate mission is to earn our right to be on the industrial strategy. But rather than complain that food and drink is not on it, I want the industry to take the lead. This list will be the least expensive, most high-impact way we think the government can assist.”

To build a “community” he’s also set up a social platform called The Collaborative. “It’s LinkedIn for food exporters coupled with Future of Food members,” he explains, with 600 people already on there, including a number of buyers. The £50/month subscription “will cover our costs”, and Mauleverer is also hoping to get contributions from government and to persuade missing sectors “to lean in too”.

All of this while also offering “direct access” to in-market experts, retailers, importers and more. Ahead of the Sial trade show in October, the FDEA will fly in supermarket officials from across the world for a ‘meet the buyer’ event, for example.

And when it comes to the key markets for UK exporters, Europe, with its upcoming SPS deal with the UK, and the Gulf, following a new trade deal signed last month, are achievable markets in the short term, he suggests.

Ultimately, hitting the FDEA’s £35bn target will not only boost the economy, but also further the UK’s soft power, Mauleverer adds: “It’s our secret weapon, and almost an amplifier of ‘Brand Britain’. That’s what excites me.”

“We’ll be putting a massive lean on the UK’s innovation capabilities, which links in with the Future of Food competition. Because that’s where the future of exports is, that’s the USP of the UK. We’re so good at innovation, we just don’t tell anyone about it.

“If you look a little bit into the future, nothing should ever be a surprise. You should change and have remedies for stuff like GLP-1s. I’m trying to find the innovators of tomorrow to put them on the world stage and get the food industry to collaborate its way to growth.”