Mr John Maunder
1936 – present
That John Maunder should have forged an illustrious career within the poultrymeat sector should come as little surprise, given the family history in the livestock and butchery trade.
Established by his great grandfather Frederick Maunder in Devon in 1886, the operation was passed on to Lloyd Maunder in 1898, who grew the business, supplying meat and dairy products to buyers in London, including a certain J Sainsbury.
With a dependence on rail transport, the business relocated to Willand, near Exeter in 1913, and then expanded rapidly in the interwar period, both as a meat processor and as a retail butcher.
Lloyd’s grandson, John Maunder came into the business in 1955 having recently completed his national service.
John recalls how, soon after joining the firm, they received a telephone call from Sainsbury’s head office, asking them to attend an urgent meeting in London.
“A Sainsbury’s director welcomed us all to the meeting and said they had just returned from a study visit to the US, where two developments in particular excited them,” he recalls.
“One was a development in retailing called ‘self-service’, where customers were invited to pick their own requirements and pay on exit. The other was the production of high volume, affordable chicken.”
Sainsbury’s had called together businesses spread around the country, who they thought would be interested in taking on the challenge of setting up the equivalent in the UK.
“Travelling back to the office, my father and I itemised what we would need – a supply of meat strain chicks, farms to grow them on, and a processing plant to produce ‘oven-ready’ birds for the new self-service stores.”
The company had a head start because of its long-standing connection with livestock farmers in the South West, who supplied it with pigs, cattle and lambs, and would be more than able to turn their hands to chickens.
Poultry processing equipment was initially sourced from the US, until UK and Dutch manufacturers rose to the challenge, and so, a completely new industry was born, run mainly by family businesses such as Lloyd Maunder.
Next came a feed mill, and then a hatchery as, under John’s skilled management, the operation grew and grew, driving forward the production of poultrymeat for the retail sector and becoming the dominant player in the South West.
In February 1992 disaster struck, when an electrical fault caused a fire that destroyed the whole building at Willand. It is a sign of John’s standing in the industry that friends and competitors came to the rescue, taking up the firm’s total throughput.
While the initial focus was on intensive broiler production, John was also instrumental in the development of slower growing birds too, working with breeders to develop free-range, high welfare chicken to meet changing market needs towards the end of the 20th century.
John was also a leading light in the wider poultry sector, being elected chairman of the British Poultry Federation (the forerunner of today’s British Poultry Council) on three separate occasions, and chairing the Poultry Industry Conference organising committee for 12 years.
He was awarded the BOCM Pauls (now ForFarmers) Poultry Person of the Year award in 1988, and chaired AVEC, the body representing the poultry industry within the European Union from 1994 to 1999.
His family business was eventually sold to the 2 Sisters Food Group in 2008, by which time it was employing more than 800 staff, and processing 500,000 birds a week from over 150 farms.
The chain of West Country Butchers was sold separately to John’s son Andrew, so retaining a family interest in the company formed by his great grandfather in the 19th century.