84-Year-Old Billionaire: How I Turned a Small Blueberry Business into a Global Empire | John Bragg

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Small-town values became business principles: keep your word and make deals fair on both sides.

  Bragg’s father grew up in a country store, where you needed repeat customers who couldn’t go elsewhere: if you say you’ll be there at seven, be there at seven or before. Three weeks into Dalhousie Law School, Bragg realized law ‘was for lawyers.’ But first-year law taught him the principle of a fair deal on both sides of the table—leaving both parties happy is the objective even when you can’t always manage it.

• 02

  Become master of your own destiny, even when you don’t know what you’re doing.

  Bragg started at 15 with four or five pickers and 4,000 pounds of wild blueberries; Oxford now handles about 150 million pounds. Picking earned more than the $3,800 teaching job he could have taken, so his path was clear. When big Maine crops in 1967–68 left growers unable to sell, he built his own freezing plant at 28 with Pennsylvania consultants and ‘no idea what I was doing.’ Year one brought the only complete crop failure in industry history: a plant built for 2 million pounds ran about 100,000. Bankers knew it was Mother Nature, and he got through.

• 03

  Find a product you can run, then run the hell out of it.

  Mentor Paddy Crawford teased Bragg for spending $10 million on factories and nothing on marketing, but Oxford sells business to business, to jam and pie makers in Europe. Bragg passed on branded jam—a Cape Breton plan made no economic sense—because people who get successful at one thing then think they can do everything. Instead he extended the season: blueberries from August 1 running 24/7, then carrots (likely Canada’s largest processor), then battered products through winter.

• 04

  In commodities, be the low-cost producer with top quality—they usually go together.

  Quality often costs less: less product on the floor, less shrinkage. Wild blueberries have about double the antioxidants and better flavor than cultivated ones, but selling 300–400 million pounds means competing with cultivated berries, strawberries and raspberries, so Oxford aims to be low-cost even against cultivated. A culture of doing better every year means Bragg can always name five or six improvements for next season.

• 05

  Make farmers more efficient, even competitors—your survival depends on the ecosystem.

  Oxford shares its research with growers who bring it fruit. Bragg wants about half of supply from its own farms and half from independents, avoiding vulnerability to bidding wars while not owning the whole industry (‘not good politics’). His brother and mechanic Lloyd Weatherbe built the mechanical harvester after Bragg gave them a dedicated tractor and a January start; it remains the industry standard, offered to farmers.

• 06

  Be easy to deal with and pay top price; a private owner just lives longer to make it work.

  As small-town cable operators balked at fiber’s capital needs, Bragg’s lawyer noticed six buyers bid on each town but Bragg always won: easy to deal with, true to his word, no overnegotiating. His brother said of buying a woodlot, ‘if we live long enough, it’ll be a good deal’—a 12-year payback instead of 10 means working two years for nothing. Oxford paid up to twice market for about 3,000 acres of carrot land because such land is ‘only available once.’ Bragg went almost fully levered for years, comfortable because cable cash flow was budgetable.

• 07

  Private ownership enables 20-year ‘motherhood’ decisions.

  The $150 million plant on New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula, where Oxford will have more acres in blueberries than the province has in potatoes, won’t pay back in three years but is a unique long-term asset. Taking Amtelecom private cut about $3–4 million of overhead. Bragg declined to go public: it’s costly, slow and makes you a target.

• 08

  Most real wealth came after 60—and the portfolio after 75.

  Kicked out of YPO at 50, Bragg said he was just beginning: decades of land, factories and people hadn’t shown up in profits. When borrowing cost 1–2% and good stocks paid around 5% dividends, he borrowed heavily to buy quality, including lots of Berkshire. The portfolio now holds over a couple of billion dollars in equity, aiming for 10–12% returns. The family test: ‘Would Buffett do that?’—his son preferred more Berkshire to an acquisition.