JANUARY 2008 NEWS LETTER
NEWS LETTER JANUARY 2008
Dear all
Its a case of do you want the BAD news or the GOOD news first ??
Well lets start with a bit of good news first .
the shortest day is now behind us and hopefully the coming year will bring us a better summer than in 2007. The year ended with a strong up take in both our wholesale division sales to the trade and a very big healthy increase in our mail order sales since we introduced over night delivery service.
Towards the end of November 07 we started to use biodegradable wheat chips in all our mail order packaging which has proved very popular especially has it simply disovles in water and flushed away rather than filling the council bins up .
Now for that BAD news.
We are afriad that 2008 will see quite a few price increases slowly feeding through ,some of which we have already had to implement. These increases are due to several factors all coming together at once .
One , the Sterling exchange rate against the Euro has decreased by just on 10% .This time last year we were getting about 1.50 euros to the £ ,Now we are lucky to get 1.34 euros to the £ sterling , Plus as we have all dicovered to our costs Fuel Prices have risen which as increased all our transport costs from Europe.
It gets worst There is also a wheat shortage and a milk shortage so prices of Pasta and Cheese have been steadly increasing over the last few months, you might have noticed that Bread prices in your local Supermarket have increased , for this very reason.
We have been told that the reason for the wheat prices going up is that Canada which is the main producer had a bad harvest ,together with an increased demand from the Far East and also is using wheat for Bio Fuels . This is also feeding through to other cerials such as Mais and rice which are all showing signs of increasing .Milk is getting expensive as well due to the fact that China is now buying ever increasing volumes and forcing the price up ,which in turn is pushing the price of all cheeses up .
Last summer was bad for all crops especially fvery bad year for Porcini Mushrooms ,these as you know are a wild crop and the harvest can vary greatly from year to year, The 2007 harvest was the worst for many years . hopefully the 2008 harvest will be better .
GOOD NEWS Olive Oil Prices are STABLE at the moment so we should be able to maintain 2007 prices (unless China starts getting a taste for it ) We will also be maintaining our minimum FREE delivery charges for the forseeable future and will be contsantly adding new products to our range.
We are also being featured in Delia Smiths New Cook Book "How to Cheat" coming out in Feb 2008 which will feature several of our exclusive products ,including Martelli Pasta which is on the front cover. The Book will also be available from our web site at a discounted price .
Thats it for now ,i am off to open a nice bottle of wine to try and cheer myself up a bit .
Alberto
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