Customers from every corner of Wales and beyond attended Castell Howell’s series of trade shows held at three different locations: ICC Newport, Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli and Parc Eirias in Colwyn Bay.
The three events welcomed record numbers of customers and suppliers, reaffirming Castell Howell’s position as a leader in the UK foodservice industry. From live demonstrations to tailored menu solutions, the trade shows provide meaningful support for operators as well as showcasing products, and customers engaged with producers to explore emerging trends shaping the sector as well as the latest innovative product ranges. As one of Wales’ largest companies, the Caterforce member has built its reputation on reliability, scale and trust, while the trade shows highlighted how the company’s strength lies equally in its people and partnerships as in its logistics capability.
Haydn Pugh, Sales and Marketing Director, Castell Howell Foods, tells Wholesale Manager how he is a product of his environment and how the company’s foundation is that they are family, not corporate.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I started by playing rugby, which is how I met Castell Foods owner Brian Jones. Brian owns a rugby team called Carmarthen Quins who are in the Welsh Premiership, and 16 years ago I was playing semi-professional for Neath. He wanted to sign me as a player. I said, I’d love to sign as a player, but I need a job so he gave me a job at Castell Howell. I played 14 years for Carmarthen Quins, played over 300 games, seven years as captain. I’m proud to say that even though my office was next door to his for many of those years, I very rarely had any bad coffees with him, so I must have played okay for him over those 300 games.
I have been with the business for 16 years. My pathway through the business was from looking after crockery in the cash & carry, to becoming a rep, to becoming a manager, head of sales and then sales and marketing director. I pride myself on that, I’ve probably got one of the best educations within the business, from learning from some incredible people around me, good business people, but also learning the things not to do.
I’m young in what I’m doing. I’m still learning.
I look after all the sales within Castell Howell. I can’t do it without an unbelievable team around me, I’m extremely blessed. I think the difference with what we do, compared to the opposition is we genuinely do live and breathe it. We’re a family business. My first phone call in the morning is Mr. Brian Jones himself, 79 years old, wondering what’s going on, and my last phone call at night, probably around 11pm is the same Brian Jones asking me how things have gone so when you live and breathe it like that, I think that you’ve naturally got a step ahead of your competition.
We’re never complacent. Relationships are the most important things to us, supplier, staff and customer relationships, and that will be forever grained in the ethos and culture of the business.
I’m very proud to be on the board for Castell Howell, I’m the youngest board member. I’m a product of my environment, I’ve learnt from everyone around me, I continue to do so, but I’d like to think that people learn from me as well.
What made you want to get into wholesaling?
Castell Howell being a family business, with Brian and Martin being heavily involved in it, you become part of the DNA. We have got a wall of fame downstairs in our reception, where there are pictures of people that have been with Castell Howell for over 40 years. There are also people that have been with the business for a day. What’s important to this business is that whether you’ve been there for a day or 40 years, everybody is treated the same.
When I started with Brian at the cash & carry, I really didn’t know much about it, apart from the fact that I was quite good at lifting kegs at that time, putting them on to high stacks. Because I’m six foot five, I could reach the first level of the racking in the cash & carry. But I came into it not really knowing much. Like anything in life, if you’ve got a good personality, a strong work ethic, and you’re willing to learn, then you’re pretty much there already. I took a massive interest in the area that I got involved in. I started in the business looking after the crockery, and it just became a real passion. I can’t really give a reason as to how and why, but it was something that I really got involved with, and that was my first opportunity of going out and being a rep, 15 years ago. I was repping crockery on the road, meeting customers, selling to them, understanding their needs. I’m trying to sell them something that will help them and help with their business. I fell in love with it, and I continued to keep working strong on it. Quite early in my repping days, I became a regional manager at the age of 24, which meant I was looking after a small team of reps.
I come from a sporting background, and I’m a real believer that from business to sport to life, a lot of things cross over. I captained Wales at different age grades, which meant I knew how to manage people. I understand people’s needs quite well, and I think that’s what really kicked me on well, understanding how I get the best out of people. Even though I was the youngest, the least experienced, I got the best out of people.
I had some strong people around me, like Mario Dallavalle, owner of Mario’s ice cream. He has been in the business for 30 years, so I learnt so much from him. Another one was Neil Allinson, who has been with Castell Howell for 40 years. I am a product of my environment. On paper, I’m probably not very qualified, but I am highly skilled and I have been educated by some of the best in the industry.
I had the opportunity to become head of sales and sales and marketing director. I completely live and breathe wholesale, I live and breathe for our customers, for our staff, for our suppliers. Ultimately, we can’t be successful if our customers, our suppliers and our staff aren’t successful. Everything around what I do is about living and breathing wholesale, I can genuinely tell you that we’re on it 24/7 so it’s become a real passion. I fell in love with what we call the juice. The juice keeps you going, even when you’ve had a bad day or when you’ve had a good day, every day is different in the wholesale world. I’m very much on a sporting mentality and I think that in life, whoever wants it most gets it over someone that doesn’t. I’m very proud to say that me and my team most definitely do that. That’s why I fell in love with this game.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a wholesaler?
The biggest challenge is what I put in our message when we put on our free trade shows, which is that we genuinely understand and appreciate how difficult the hospitality industry is for our customers. Everything that we are trying to do is to support them, whether that is with new, cost effective, high quality, innovative products, or whether that is using our development chefs to go through and fine tune the products that they’re buying with us, to help them buy better products with us and understand the ranges that we’ve got.
Myself and Matt Lewis, the MD, are actively, constantly meeting with customers on a day to day basis, because we feel obliged to be connected with them. We’re going into kitchens, we’re going into restaurants, pubs, coffee shops. It’s hard out there.
It’s a huge challenge at the minute. If you throw in the wars and everything else, it’s that feeling of the unknown, and nobody really knows what’s going on at the minute. Some businesses and suppliers and other people will always guess and try to manoeuvre pricing to try and replicate what’s going to potentially happen. But we cannot afford to do that to our customers. They are already going through enough pain at the minute. That is a huge challenge, even local to myself, there’s about three or four establishments closed in the last month alone, which is really sad, really scary.
We’re trying our best to be as close to these people as possible, just to try and help in any way possible. That’s something that we are coming across pretty much every other day. It’s about how we manage it and how we adapt to it. We’re coming up with a lot of concepts to try and help our customers. We understand how cost effective it is, with overheads and staffing. It’s our job to give our customers a concept that helps them in the times where they might not be able to spend as much money.
We say at our trade shows that we don’t look at our trade shows as a money-making opportunity. I know that some competitors do, and they put it out there in terms of how much they may or may not turn over. We are the opposite in terms of looking at our shows as a money growth perspective. Our shows are there just for innovation support, whether that customer wants to buy it in one week, three months’, six months’ or 18 months’ time, we’re obligated to make sure that product that they see is ready for them when it suits their needs, not as a pressure, order now, order a pallet. That is not what we do. And I think if you speak to a lot of our customers and suppliers that visited our shows, they would fully embrace that.
That’s why I went to the free trade shows with the mindset that it has to be about supporting our customers, because we know how challenging it is for them.
How is the company performing right now?
We’re doing fantastic. From a financial year perspective, we’re tracking around 12% growth.
We had a record year last year, where we finished our financial year at £256 million so we’re on target to hit over that £280 million mark, depending on how the rest of the financial year goes. We’ve put a lot of focus into new business and existing business. From a public sector perspective, we’ve done extremely well in our field, and we’ll continue to focus there. But I think our biggest area of growth has been our independent business, which is so positive and strong. The biggest challenge has been independent business struggling, but at the same time, a lot of businesses have done well. As much as new business is important, it’s about building on our current business that we’ve got, and trying to get more products in there, more opportunities, and just working stronger and closer with them.
I think we will be over 11% growth and probably touching between £275 million to £280 million next year.
Our growth trajectory is central to our wider purpose. Growth isn’t simply about scale; it’s what enables us to offer the strongest commercials, deliver the highest level of service, and continually reinvest back into our business and the communities we’re part of. That commitment is at the heart of everything we do and it is my job to do so, which I take great pride in.
Can you tell us a bit more about the three trade shows you have held?
Probably one of my proudest moments in the business is that we sat around the board table over a year ago, and I said I wanted to have the opportunity to put on a third trade show. And I wanted that third trade show to be in the ICC in Newport.
The reason for that goes back to the whole vision of why we put these shows on, which is to give our customers the best experience possible. Parc y Scarlets, Llanelli will always be a flagship show for us. It’s in Carmarthenshire. It’s where the business was built, where a lot of our customers that have been with us from the beginning are based. They still come to those shows, it is so vitally important to us. But with more businesses coming through the door, we wanted to make sure that our customers had more time to spend with suppliers, speak to our reps, talk about innovation, talk about products, sample products and talk more in depth. I think putting the ICC show on did exactly what we wanted it to do. It did it in terms of giving customers in the east of Wales and the west of England an opportunity to travel to a closer show. It also took a small amount of pressure off that Parc y Scarlets show in terms of numbers.
ICC is one of the best convention centres in Europe, it’s an unbelievable setup. Celtic Manor and ICC are one of our partners, we supply all the food there, which we’re extremely proud of.
Putting that show on was unbelievable. We had way over 1000 customers travelling from the west country of England and the east of Wales which was exactly what we wanted. We also had some customers from west and north Wales, which was brilliant.
Across those three shows, we delivered record numbers into the ICC. Being the first show, it was always going to be record numbers. But we could not have been happier with the number of customers that came to the show. It was absolutely perfect. Registrations were strong. It put a lot more emphasis on how important all three shows were. I’m proud to say that we’ve locked into the ICC for another four years.
We knew that the first year would be an opportunity to see how it would go, but it’s been such a good opportunity that it’s a fixture that’s here to stay.
Parc y Scarlets was record breaking in terms of numbers, we had over 1500 on both days. And North Wales was absolutely incredible. How our team up north delivered with the customers up there was truly special. The record-breaking trade show series is something that I’m extremely proud of. To deliver it for Brian and Martin is definitely something special for me. But delivering it for the customers, staff and suppliers was extremely special.
We’re already working on delivering an even better series next year. We’re not the type of people that sit back and high five and think, we’ve done it, we’ve made it. There will be a lot of changes, we’re going to make it even better.
We were incredibly proud of the record breaking success of this year’s tradeshows, but in truth, we feel like we’re only just getting started. The momentum from these events is already driving major plans for next year, where we’ll be elevating the experience for our customers, suppliers and staff to an entirely new level.
Across every show, our message was clear and consistent: We’re Family, not Corporate. That isn’t a slogan — it’s the foundation of who we are. It’s how we work, how we treat people, and how we’ll continue to show up as we grow.
How many depots does Castell Howell have and do you plan to expand the number of depots?
We’ve got our HQ at Cross Hands, which is our main depot, it is 85,000 square foot. We’ve got satellite depots in Merthyr Tydfil, Avonmouth, Chirk and Porthmadog. We’ve also got a cash & carry in Carmarthen, we are delivering from that site to a specific geographical area.
We have broken ground on a warehouse expansion at our Cross Hands site. We’re currently sitting on an 85,000 square foot facility. We are building a 90,000 square feet facility on site, it’s going to be state of the art storage.
It will include frozen, chilled and dry products, but it is going to be fully frozen. With our sales growth being around 11.5% to probably over £280 million next year, that brings pressure to make sure we get our trucks out on time. We are so proud to stock over 14,000 lines, but that means we need space. My job is to grow the business, but without anything being jeopardised. I don’t want deliveries to be an hour later, or service levels to drop. Service levels are why we are the best at what we do. We use this analogy at Castell Howell that we’re a Swiss watch, whether that is the guys down on the yard, transport, warehouse, office, accounts, every cog has to tick in order for it to work.
The new build is going to be a £20 million pound investment, but ultimately it’s going to make easier working environments for our staff, from picking to storage to buying, everybody will feel the benefits of us investing in this.
If my job is to continue to grow, I need to have the space and the facilities to do that. I’ve got the team, I’ve got the resources, and I think that we’ve got an unbelievable customer base that is consistently growing, and it’s growing because we’re competitive, but we deliver on service, and we’re family, we’re not corporate. Hopefully the expansion will be ready within the next 18 months to two years.
What foodservice sectors do your customers operate in?
Every kind of sector, from greasy spoons and coffee shops to hospitals, schools and fine dining restaurants and everything in between. We pride ourselves on being big enough to cope and small enough to care. We’ve got some unbelievably big customers that we do a lot of business with, but we put a lot of focus on the smaller spending customers, because ultimately, we need everybody to be successful. We pride ourselves on relationships. One of the philosophies that we have within the business is that I want every rep to have a personal relationship with every one of their customers, because everybody is just as important as each other. We’ve got such an important NPD team because we have to cater for every sector that we’re in and give each customer an opportunity to try the innovation and new ideas.
What benefits do you get from being a member of Caterforce?
Caterforce is a buying and marketing consortium so when you put 11 members together, it allows us to have one of the best buying powers out there in terms of getting the best pricing for our customers. One of the biggest benefits is having like-minded businesses being connected to you and having the same mindset and philosophy as you, talking about situations and customer opportunities, customer issues, strategies, analysis, sharing ideas.
We put together a sales and marketing director team where we’d all get together twice a year and share insights, learn from each other. That has been one of the best things we’ve done in terms of benefits. It’s been unbelievable, because you get to share ideas, and you get to listen to like-minded people. I think the beauty of the buying group is you’ve got 11 members that really want each other to do well. We help each other in supporting each other’s growth.
How far is the geographical reach of your business?
We are the biggest food wholesaler in Wales, we cover the whole of Wales, but we also cover northern England, into Cheshire, we are delivering into Liverpool. Further south, we’re delivering as far as Gloucester and Bath. We are delivering into London five days a week, as part of a contract.
We’re governed by what our customers do, we will follow our customers. It’s all based on logistics and being able to manage that magic service. We have the Caterforce group to help us attack national businesses by working together. But from a Castell Howell perspective, those are the areas we focus on. We’re going to look to keep on growing. I’m a firm believer in making sure that we grow where we already are, we still have massive opportunities where we are.
We put a lot of time and effort into our current portfolio, rather than trying to go too far afield. We concentrate on what we’re doing now, and we will move out naturally as time goes on. We’re pretty much everywhere, six or seven days a week.
How digital is your business?
This year has also marked a major leap forward in our digital offering. The enhancements to our e-commerce platform, the introduction of WhatsApp ordering, and the integration of AI have all been genuine game changers. The feedback has been fantastic — not because these tools are ‘new’, but because they give our customers more choice than ever before.
Our philosophy is simple: we want our customers to order in the way that suits them. Whether that’s through our platform, WhatsApp, AI assisted tools, or the traditional channels they’ve always trusted, the choice is entirely theirs. Our role is to understand their needs, support them in the way that works best for them, and remove as much friction as possible from their day to day operations.
These innovations aren’t about pushing customers into a new way of working — they’re about meeting them where they are. That’s what being a family driven business means to us, and it’s a commitment we’ll continue to build on as we move forward.
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