Davison’s Ice Cream has responded to the social media storm over the Royal Agricultural Show, saying a government department was mostly to blame.
The issue of Davison’s holding an exclusivity tender for the island’s two agricultural shows exploded as some islanders criticised the Peel based ice cream manufacturer and accused of being anti-competition.
Another retailer posted on Facebook the night before the show which said it was not allowed to attend.
That led to criticism of show organisers, the government and Davison’s over the exclusion of the other company.
However, Davison’s has published an email (see below) which it says was sent to it anonymously in which the company said in June it was disappointed be unable to sell its producer at the show.
Davison’s said: “Firstly, I’d like to state that The Royal Show, and Southern Shows are privately run entities, made up of a voluntary committee who all do a cracking job at both events, and is in no way run or controlled by the government as a lot of social media comments put up would have led you to believe, with some accusing us of paying the government off to attend the shows which aren’t run by them, makes perfect sense.
“To answer the main comment made – yes, we have a legal agreement in place with both the Royal and Southern Shows, both for a 10-year period with the Royal’s agreement ending after next year’s show in 2025, and the Southern’s ending in 2029.
“These legal agreements were put into place in 2015 and 2019 respectfully, and all other producers in existence at this time had every right to go for them as we did.”
DEFA
While saying that the other producer was aware of the contract and why it isn’t able to sell its produce at the two shows, Davison’s said it is the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture which it feels is “most to blame for this situation arising”.
It added that the department is “only an exhibitor like ourselves on these shows they had no right to promise companies attendance in their marquee on any of the shows without prior permission, especially knowing full well that there was a legal agreement in place between the show and a sponsor years before the 2024 show took place”.
And said: “The fact that these promises were made by DEFA because of the Food and drink festival cancellation is not an issue we created but DEFA themselves, and they then shouldn’t have tried to use what we perceive to be underhanded techniques to gain access to these shows for a producer who they knew full well would contravene the legal agreement already in place.”
Future
Referencing the accusations of being anti-competition, Davison’s said it will be up to any ice cream retailers on the island to bid for the future tenders of the agriculture shows.
It said: “We’re all for fair competition which is why ourselves and Manx ices are both present at the TT and MGP, which we tender for yearly, but we feel in relation to the shows we have been treated unfairly by two organisations who both had prior knowledge of these agreements being in place and which were entered into fairly in the first place.
“I hope this post will stop this matter from arising each week now that both sides of the story are out there, or that is until the local media (excluding Energy FM, who got our side first before publishing anything) twist it to suit themselves again as they did with the last post, simply to gain engagement by twisting their posts to include ourselves, even though we were never mentioned in the original post.”
See the full post here.
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