In the early days I was in the advertising business, handling major company accounts. I learnt a lot about how big businesses operate. After that I was never afraid of going up against big competition.

A lot of people who start up compete with smaller businesses. That's actually more competitive. Big companies are slow-moving, like tankers. When you start off they're not too interested in a company eating around the edges but before they know it you're a big brand.

I started my first coffee company in the 1970s. The market was in turmoil because of high coffee prices. After a 20-year high, one day the price dropped. I was waiting to get a product onto the market. I rang my European contact and asked if he could turn his best beans into instant coffee. That's how I launched my brand onto the retail market.

I think 70 per cent of business is hard work and the rest is luck. But you have to make that luck. I went to Sainsbury's with my idea and we launched on a Monday morning. We sold one million jars in the first week.

I established Food Brands Group in 1983. Innovation has always been absolutely core. When we came into ground coffee the first thing we did was launch a soft pack [as opposed to brick packs]. Everyone loved it and Sainsbury's changed its own-label to soft packs.

The correlation between coffee and wine is so close-the final taste is affected by soil and climate. So, as with grape varietals, we introduced a country-of-origin coffee so people actually knew what was inside the jar. It brought interest and excitement to the shelves. Our competitors just had a brand and a blend—you never knew what was inside.

On my travels I saw how coffee was grown and how poor the communities were. Coffee is the second most highly traded commodity after oil but everywhere it is grown is a Third World country. I wanted to find a way of giving something back. Not just because I wanted to but also because I realised that the best-quality coffee came from the small farms and these were the poorest of all.

When the Fairtrade organisation opened its offices I saw it as a great opportunity. We were one of the pioneers of Fairtrade and organic coffee. I'm keen to make sure that, rather than people seeing Fairtrade as a charity to look at it as a quality product as well. The recognition of Fairtrade is high but there are still a lot of people who don't know what it stands for. There's still a long way to go to educate people.

We've had acquisition interest, particularly now, because we are one of the very few independent companies. There's been so much consolidation in the market. We're considered the number one Fairtrade brand in the UK.

We haven't been affected by the recession. It's not easy, but we've grown in that period—in the last 12 months by eight per cent. The Starbucks and the Costas have made coffee more exciting. Consumers demand better quality.

There's a trend towards darker, richer coffees. The espresso market is growing fast—47 per cent market share in the last 12 months. We hope to push that trend and have just launched a beans product.