insider business in 2008, Defra, the food and rural affairs ministry, announced plans to withdraw funding from FFB (Food from Britain), the body responsible for promoting British food overseas. This came as something of a shock to Philip Horemans. Based in Brussels, Horemans had spent nearly 20 years working exclusively for FFB and had been a key player in helping turn Quorn – the vegetarian meat alternative – into a household name. Taking a positive view of the situation, Horemans realised that being set free in such a devastating fashion was, in fact, a moment of great opportunity. Establishing Green Seed a few months later, Horemans soon found himself promoting not just English jams and marmalades, but South African wines, Australian fish, German meats and Italian dairy products too. « In other words, » he explains, « we are now in contact with a much larger world and a larger public too. There GROWTH INDUSTRY Budding entrepreneur Philip Horemans started Green Seed to nurture trade links between contrasting food markets, and help producers develop their companies internationally. Jeremy Josephs finds business blooming are new opportunities which are satisfying and exciting in equal measure. It also means that it’s no longer purely one-way traffic – we can introduce Belgian food products, for example, into the UK. » Before long, Horemans had successfully established the Green Seed Group, a network of consultancy offices in 10 countries all sharing a common brief : to help food companies develop their businesses internationally. When it comes to something as dear tous as taste, Horemans will tell you, there appears to be the emergence of two equal but opposite trends. On one hand, there’s the apparently unstoppable homogenisation of the high street, with McDonald’s and Starbucks outlets in cities across the world from Sheffield to Shanghai. But at the same time, demand for local recipes and produits du terroir continues to grow. The Green Seed consultancy provides fair and fearless advice, based on local knowledge, as to whether your particular food product A is likely to work in country B. Which prompts one to enquire, of course, whether or not anything can work anywhere. « Absolutely not ! » exclaims Horemans. « Take Marmite, for example. This is not something that is likely to appeal to the Belgian or French palate. It’s a cultural difference. Not without a multimillion-euro marketing campaign anyway, and even then it’s doubtful. » As the world continues to shrink through cheap travel and digital communication, we have opened our minds to new foods, recipes and cultures. Cookery programmes on TV have been a key part of this process. Whatever the case, it means that people are increasingly receptive to trying out new food products. But how to show the French that the Brits can make extremely tasty garlic bread ? How to get the Belgians to try garlic-flavoured mussels harvested in Scotland ? « This is where our expertise comes in, » says Horemans. « You have to have local knowledge and understand what is likely to work where, and how. At the end of the day it’s a combination of marketing and years of experience in the trade. » As he dashes back and forth between London and Paris and Brussels and London, Eurostar is one of the few places where Horemans can « travel quickly, stretch my legs, relax, think or have a nap ». Suitably refreshed and reinvigorated, he continues his quest to introduce the delights of local cuisines with new markets around the world. greenseedgroup.com Photograph : Benoit Grimalt 54 metropolitan