Julie Blackburn talks to David Valkema about marketing ’magnificent Manx meat’ and the possibilities for the future of the meat plant.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the riches we take so easily for granted.

A months ago, American investor, David Valkema, found himself at a meeting in St John’s to discuss the future of the meat plant on the island. He was there because he had been in discussion with the Isle of Man government about buying the plant.

He hadn’t planned to speak at the meeting but as he found himself hearing ’all doom and gloom and everything’s awful’ he felt compelled to stand up and say something.

He recalls: ’Our farmers work so hard, they are so invested in it - I love the farmers. But I had to tell them: "I think you’re not counting your blessings: here’s why Manx meat is amazing" and I gave them my five-point asset list.

’I’m trying to bring more Manx meat to the UK - it’s magnificent meat - and my five point asset list is:

’We have hormone free meat.

’We have antibiotic free meat.

’We have GMO-free meat.

’We have stress-free meat.

’And we have a naturally wholesome and natural product.

’We can assure those five points and we need to be beating that drum as hard as we can up and down the streets of the UK.

’I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not hard for us to sell meat in London to the restaurants there. It’s all about natural and wholesome ingredients now and, if you can get an ingredient without all those bad things in it, they’ll buy it up.’

David knows what he’s talking about.

Having spent all of his working life in the reinsurance business - he still heads a syndicate at Lloyd’s - he came to the island to live, with the idea of slowing down a little.

Instead he found himself becoming the proud proprietor of Dave’s Delicious Dogs, which makes traditional frankfurters and bratwurst to family recipes he inherited from his Dutch and German parents.

All the meat they use is Manx, from Ballakelly Farm in Andreas.

It is slaughtered at the meat plant and sent across to Franconian sausages, in Kent, of which David is now also a part owner, to be made into traditional hot dog ’curves’ (the sausage-y bit) and other types of meat products.

All this came about after David went to the Royal Manx show a few years ago and discovered to his amazement that there were no hot dogs for sale in the catering tent.

Having thought about the reasons for this - from an American’s viewpoint - unthinkable state of affairs, he went into a supermarket and checked the contents on a tin of ’pork hot dog sausages’.

He discovered to his horror that they contained ’35 per cent mechanically recovered chicken parts plus pork fat and fillers’.

He said: ’I wouldn’t feed that to my dog. So I started calling around and I found nobody makes a quality hot dog, certainly not on the island, and it’s rare to find one in the British Isles.

’You’ve never tasted good quality hot dogs. I think that’s why the Brits don’t warm to the idea.’

Unable to find anyone with the necessary equipment for making hot dog sausages on the island, he decided to have a go at making them himself and found it ’a steep learning curve’.

A chance meeting on the Queen Mary II led him to becoming an investor in the Franconian Sausage Company and now some of meat products he sells to the Savoy, the Dorchester and all the Cote Brasseries around the UK are made from Manx meat.

Because he says that he might ultimately consider bringing a similar meat processing facility to the island, he has spent the last year or so investigating the possibility of buying our own meat plant. He has brought over several meat plant managers to give their opinion.

’I also spoke with the Isle of Man Creamery folks. I wanted to understand how it’s worked so well for them because you get Manx cheese in the USA - my mother buys it.

’I wanted to understand their success - success can be replicated with enough effort.

’You can pinpoint their success on marketing.’

Although David ultimately decided not to go ahead with the purchase, primarily because it would turn his hot dog adventure from a fun sideline into a far more time-consuming business, he had formulated a plan to make the plant successful, which he outlines.

’At the moment you have the same guys doing all the same jobs, in addition to doing other jobs,’ he says.

’You need to have a dedicated sales force and you need a marketing plan.

’You have to sell to your butchers on the island, and your retailers, but you also need to break into the UK market. You’re not doing that yet and to do that you need a marketing team.’

And, like the Isle of Man Creamery, we could be thinking further afield with our meat than just the UK.

He adds: ’There are increasing amounts of meat being imported and exported between the UK and USA and with Brexit it’s going to be much higher.’

Americans, he adds, are so used to their cattle being fed growth hormone (Ractopamine) that they are unaware, for example, that meat in the Isle of Man (and indeed the whole of the UK and EU) is hormone-free.

I sense that he is still tempted by the idea of buying the meat plant and I ask him whether he would he still consider it. He smiles as he gives his reply.

’A good businessman never burns the file,’ he says.