Scotland,the world Stanley Bernard doesn't like to overplay the Scottish' card at Sco-Fro. A sharp eye for opportunity and adding value is far more his style as Gillian Law discovers There's an irrepressible bounce in Stanley Bernard's step and a grin on his face that makes you smile along with him. Chairman and chief executive of Sco-Fro, Bernard is known for his enthusiasm and drive. And at our meeting he was more cheerful than ever. "I went to Edinburgh yesterday to get my OBE," he says. "And all anyone can ask me is whether I saw Sean Connery. But it was fantastic." Sco-Fro is one of Scotland's highlights in the success story department. Bernard has built up the company into a £35m business exporting frozen Scottish seafood, manufacturing seafood based ready meals, and importing grocery products from around the world. Bernard set up Sco-Fro in 1975, working from home in the mornings and evenings around a full-time job for Associated Fisheries. He admits it was tiring, but he kept the routine up for nine months even after he'd rented an office and hired a part-time manager. "I used to go in at 6am and leave notes for him before going to work. Then I'd go back at night and work till 11 o'clock." Initially Bernard was exporting seafood ­ mainly queen scallops ­ to France but then he extended the business across Europe and to the US. The first step out of straight exports came when he was offered the chance to buy a scallop processing factory in 1975. "It was on Islay, where there was a plentiful supply of scallops at the time, and we knew it was a good factory. So I went to another supplier and suggested we go into it together. We made an offer, got it, and that was us in processing." In the company's bright offices in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, Bernard sits at a Macintosh-replica dining suite. It's a suitable choice for a company that stresses its Scottish-but-not position. "We're a Scottish company and proud to be," says Bernard, "but we don't want to be seen as just Scottish'. We sell to all markets and just happen to be based in Scotland." Bernard also gets frustrated when supermarkets stock Scottish produce but only promote it in Scotland. Listening to Bernard, the history of Sco-Fro's growth sounds like a series of happy accidents. Looking for ways to diversify in the early '80s, he found his seafood customers also wanted to buy fruit. And it just so happened that Sco-Fro's marketing director had been a fruit inspector for the ministry of agriculture. "He knew a bit about Scottish fruit ­ so we started buying, freezing and exporting raspberries." Then a trade show brought more opportunities. "I saw a stand selling bottled fruit, and asked where they got the fruit from, then it turned out they needed raspberries." Bottled fruit is popular in Europe, he says, and a deal with Hazlewoods meant Sco-Fro was soon exporting bottled strawberries and raspberries. "We found a market in Germany and we soon became the brand leader," he says. From there, requests came in for odd items and Sco-Fro grabbed every opportunity. For example, he says: "Aldi wanted canned red kidney beans. I don't know why, but for some reason they couldn't get them in Germany. So we talked to a chap we knew... and started exporting huge quantities of kidney beans." Sco-Fro's huge turnover is now split fairly evenly between seafood and grocery. The largest Sco-Fro seafood factory at Fort William processes langoustines, exporting them in their shells to Spain, France and Italy, and peeling them to produce scampi for the more squeamish British taste. The Fort William scampi is hand peeled, says Bernard, to create a high quality product. A new factory will soon be opened next door to produce fish-in-sauce products for sale under own label brands and under Sco-Fro's new So Special' brand. These include salmon in hollandaise sauce and Coquilles d'Ecosse ­ scampi pieces in sauce, surrounded by piped potato and served in scallop shells. A "well known Glasgow chef" works as a consultant to Sco-Fro on food trends and new recipe ideas. Bernard believes that one of the major moves in food retailing is TV cookery programmes. They have encouraged people to cook but they want to buy the component parts in an easy form. So Bernard has decided to tap into this trend by providing these ingredients. Even so there's still a big market for the old basket meal favourites. A third Sco-Fro factory at Newton Stewart in south west Scotland produces huge quantities of breaded scampi for major multiples' own labels and for catering sales. Newton Stewart also produces Sco-Fro's own high quality brand Galloways. A recent addition is a flash frying line, a preparation technique which allows the consumer to heat the scampi in the oven. "That's what the retail scene demands these days," says Bernard. "It's opened up a larger market for us. We launched the product last August and only expected it to run at about 30% for the first six months but it's actually been running at 100% ever since." Breaded scampi has been an unexpected success from the beginning. When Sco-Fro bought the Newton Stewart factory the plan was to switch it to scallop production but the scallop harvest was poor and scampi was kept on. Bernard says: "From knowing very little about it, we've become a reasonably large player in the scampi market." The Islay factory was closed when local scallop supplies ran out. The original 10 or so boats fishing the area dropped away to two or three which weren't bringing in enough to sustain the factory, says Bernard. On the grocery side, Sco-Fro has come a long way from frozen raspberries. Canned foods are big business, as are dried foods like pasta and instant noodles imported from south east Asia. Sco-Fro supplies own label instant noodles to several of the multiples, and authentic ethnic sauces are a growing area. Each import decision is a complex one, says Bernard. A team of technicians visits each factory and brings it up to the standards demanded by British retailers. Bernard is determined to supply authentic flavours and works with the factories to produce the real thing. If a sauce is incredibly hot, it may be toned down a little for the UK palate, he says, but on the whole he would prefer to reject something than modify it too much. Bernard has earned the reputation of being a popular player in the industry. Patrick Davis, for example, former head of Food from Britain, and now director of Group Cereals Services, has worked closely with Bernard over the years. He might smile a lot, laughs Davis, "but he's a tough negotiator and managed to become very, very successful in a fiercely competitive environment." It was thanks to Bernard's flamboyant nature that they met ­ with Stanley wearing a large fur hat at the World Food Fair in Moscow, Davis couldn't fail to notice him. Bernard has developed very quietly into one of the most innovative players in the industry, says Jonathan Tait, director of Scottish Enterprise's food and drink division. "It's clear to me that Scotland has to learn how to add value much more than it does, and there's a lot to be learned from Sco-Fro." And this is part of Bernard's future plans business ­ to add more value to the seafood products where Sco-Fro has years of experience and a good reputation. "The market has moved towards added value and is continuing to do so. Commodities are very price sensitive, so we're using our expertise to create value added products," he says. Bernard spends a lot of time outside his business working with training groups ­ the Scottish Executive export panel, Food from Britain and Scottish Enterprise (in the latter with its food skills development team). Here, says Tait, is another valuable lesson for Scotland's business community. He says: "We're all wee ­ so we need to work together." The Scottish Seafood Project (now Seafood Scotland) has also had Bernard on board as marketing director over the past three years. All Sco-Fro employees are trained to Scottish Vocational Qualification standard and Sco-Fro won the Scottish Enterprise training award last year. He says: "It's very satisfying for me and for the workforce too." When Bernard has the time, he can be found out at sea in his boat off the west coast of Scotland. "Sailing is my real love but my wife doesn't like it when the weather's stormy ­ of course I think that's when it gets fun!" Unfortunately, his sailing moments are rare with the majority of his time being taken up with business. His two daughters work in Australia, while his son has joined Sco-Fro in seafood wholesale. There's no pressure on any of them to join the family business or take up the reins, he says. "It's up to them ­ if they prove themselves, that's fine." However, he's not looking for a successor just yet. He's still excited about the business and wakes up every morning looking forward to the day ahead. "Well, most days, anyway," he laughs. {{PROFILE }}