By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business
September 16, 2022
Source: CNN Business
Photo Source: Unsplash, Sheikha M.
LondonCNN Business — For years, King Charles was preparing to step into the role of monarch following Queen Elizabeth’s history-making reign. In the meantime, he was holding downanother job: Owner of a profitable business.
Charles — long a passionate advocate of environmental causes — founded Duchy Originals in 1990 when he was the Prince of Wales to market produce from his farm. It’s since grown into the largest organic food and drink brand in the United Kingdom, according to the company. In the year through March 2021, Duchy Originals earned nearly £3.6 million ($4.1 million) before taxes.
The brand has had its ups and downs. But it’s thrived since entering into a partnership with Waitrose in 2009. The upmarket grocery chain now has the exclusive right to sell products under the Duchy name, and shoppers can find salmon, sausages, milk, carrots and blueberries bearing the “Waitrose Duchy Organic” name at its stores.
“It’s turned into a very successful business,” said Andrew Bloch, a London-based public relations expert. “You can sense with this brand, it has heart and soul behind it.”
The future is uncertain, though. Control of the Duchy Originals brand is up in the air during a period of national mourning culminating in the Queen’s state funeral on Monday.
“We will liaise with the Royal Household on future arrangements when the time is right to do so,” a spokesperson for Waitrose said. Ownership of Duchy Originals will most likely pass to Charles’ eldest son Prince William, who also inherits the separate Duchy of Cornwall estate — worth about £1 billion ($1.2 billion). And while the prince has studied organic farming, he’s likely to be less hands-on than his father.
“He’ll be interested, but he’ll entrust others to run it,” said Sally Bedell Smith, a biographer and author of the book “Charles: The Misunderstood Prince.”
A passion project Charles spent decades preaching the benefits of organic farming and protecting the environment, even before such issues became mainstream causes.
In 1985, he converted Home Farm, near his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, into a fully organic system. The Duchy Originals venture emerged five years later. “Since the beginning of the 1980s, when I first had responsibility for managing some land in my own right at Highgrove, I have wanted to focus on an approach to food production that avoids the impact of the predominant, conventional system of industrialized agriculture, which, it is increasingly clear to see, is having a disastrous effect on soil fertility, biodiversity and animal and human health,” Charles told Country Life magazine in 2021.
The first Duchy Originals product was an oaten biscuit sold in 1992. Initially, items bearing the brand were only found in high-end shops such as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, though they later expanded into outlets like Waitrose, which caters to wealthier shoppers but has many more locations.
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