It takes a special kind of person to work through the night on Birmingham’s Wholesale Market – and the ones who can hack it will stay for decades.
You need to be able to get up before 1.30am (when not everyone else has even gone to bed).
And you also have to be willing – and able – to tolerate the long, dark hours of winter and its head-numbing cold when the weather turns bitter.
Mark Tate is such a man, with a proud record to champion.
As well as being a father of three daughters with three stepsons to boot, he’s the energetic chairman of Birmingham Wholesale Market’s fresh produce association.
Along with his brother, Paul, the pair employ 80-90 people as the co-owner of George Perry.
Today it's an £18 million fruit and veg business which includes GP Salads and the Midlands’ Joe Richards stores.
Founded in 1870, George Perry is now the country’s oldest supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables – possibly in Europe, too.
So what’s it really like working on Birmingham’s Wholesale Market?
Mark’s working day begins at 2.15am and includes five to six hours of selling on the trading floor followed by a move to his office on the mezzanine level above the delivery hall.
Even up here the office staff can barely keep warm (given that it’s a day of bad weather more suited to life on a North Sea oil rig).
But his life could have been all so different if it had not been for ten minutes’ of misfortune one weekend.
“I was a YTS player at Aston Villa in 1981/82,” he says.
Not only were they league champions - the then First Division equivalent of the Premier League.
But they were also on their way to winning the then European Cup equivalent of today’s Champions League with legends like Peter Withe, Gordon 'Sid' Cowans and Dennis Mortimer.
Though relatively short for a budding centre half, Mark smiles when he says: “But I could jump...
"And I was captain of the West Midlands.”
But his football career came crashing down when he went to watch a Sunday league game.
After much persuasion, he agreed to make up the numbers for a team two players short in the second half.
Ten minutes after stepping on to the pitch, an over-eager opponent scythed through Mark’s legs.
His tendons were so badly damaged it was game up when the x-rays revealed how serious his injury was.
Mark claims he had his contract ripped up for breaking the rules.
But then he thought Lennie Lawrence was going to sign him at Lincoln – until the future Charlton Athletic manager didn’t call him back after suddenly moving to Leyton Orient for his own career break.
Sensing a career in football was never meant to be, Mark’s father Alan, now 72, told him to forget his dream.
And so a market trader was born instead who would one day take over from the business his dad had acquired in 1975-6.
This was some three years after the Wholesale Market had first opened on Pershore Street.
Mark, who played semi-professional football until he was 45, posted a note online in February 2017 announcing that traders would be moving to the new wholesale market at The Hub in Witton by September 2017.
But it is now opening on May 8.
That's after delays including the installation of separate sprinkler systems into all 78 units – an important factor for anyone who remembers the August, 2015 arson attack which severely damaged a whole wing of the existing site.
And, of course, last year's Grenfell Tower disaster in London.
It needn’t have been like this – as a copy of the Birmingham Mail that Mark has kept since 2011 proves.
Back then, traders were being given four months’ notice to quit the market – with no alternative provision in sight.
A petition was signed by 200,000 people and the city council relented.
Finding an alternative site and then building it has dragged on and on and on.
But at last there is light at the end of the tunnel.
And everyone just seems ready to move on now that the finishing touches are now being applied in Witton.
Even then there will be a cost.
“I reckon it will cost £650,000 to move,” says Mark.
“The council is giving us £200,000 but that still leaves £450,000 to find.
“When the council wanted to shut everyone down, they were talking about a market that generates £275 million.
“Because we were all saved is why we have always been supportive of the Birmingham Mail.”
+ We visited the Wholesale Market for a live blog from 5am on St Valentine’s Day / Chinese New Year.
You can watch our live report here
Fruit and veg – from the first day to last
In another wing of the market stand two veterans of the Wholesale Market’s ‘day-one’ brigade.
They ought to be rivals but having been on the market since the day it opened in 1973, they are actually friends who simply trade directly opposite each other, with only the ‘buyers’ walkway’ to separate them.
In recent years they have both turned towards more unusual crops, from black carrots to purple potatoes and cauliflower.
Grandfather of four David Allen, 65, co-owns Edward Alain Cook Ltd while Charlie Worrall runs George Haines Ltd.
David has been on the Wholesale Markets - including its former incarnation - for 50 years since he was 15.
After working in poultry and meat he switched to fruit and veg.
He is looking forward to the new site, but loves the old one for all of its faults.
“I have spent most of my life here and love it,” says David.
“You should have retired last year but why should I?
“I still go to bed at 9pm... and get up at 1am... so I can look after the grandchildren in the afternoon!
“When this place opened it was something different, something new and a new experience.
“It was a place that was going to buzz – and it has buzzed for more than 30 years.
“I’m enjoying every minute of it and hopefully it will carry on in the new place.”
Charlie adds: “A lot of people come to barter, but then they realise the prices are set and then they are OK about it.
“Bartering is part and parcel of market life.”
And does he barter with his own suppliers?
“A lot of it is sent for us to sell for them, they leave it with us.
“Some of it is open price, some of it on firm price, which we then have to put our costs on top to cover wage bills, rent and all of the equipment we have used. But that’s how it has worked for a long, long time, since we’ve been trading really.”
Over at Total Produce is another veteran of the Pershore Street site, Chris Sydneham.
“I’ve been here for 39 years,” he says, as he too fills in a traditional ledger book by hand.
“And we’re moving to the new site in Witton and taking up five units.
“The new complex looks very good, very impressive and forward thinking.
"It is trying to move with the times.
“We have stayed in a time warp here for ten years and there’s a lot of congestion meaning people have difficulty coming into Birmingham.
“The city council will put a congestion charge on the city – and I think that will happen very shortly.”
Meat, fish and poultry
The wholesale markets for these divisions are separate to the fruit and veg – as they will also be at the new Witton site, too.
After spending several hours on the fruit, veg and flowers market and going to visit the cafe to try to warm up during what became an unbelievably bitter morning, the meat and poultry sections had already all but closed.
Just another sign of how early you have to get up if you want to capitalise on market forces.
But the fish market was open for a little while yet.
Here, Lawrence Hill from W. S. Scott and Steven Waters, from J Vickerstaff & Co Ltd were still hoping to engage some business with Chinese visitors.
Steven’s screen saver on his computer is a picture of his company in the days of the previous market.
But even he is now looking forward to moving on to Witton.
When you are a trader, you cannot afford to spend too much time staring at the world through rose tinted glasses.
With the outside weather only fit for penguins, the inside feels even colder thanks to copious boxes of ice adding to the chill factor.
Lawrence Hill had a couple of beautiful wrasse fish in from Cornwall, a fish that people buy because of its golden hue.
“The colour tempts them, but nobody buys it twice,” he smiles.
“We have lots of different fish here – including the yellow-striped snapper from Brazil.
“If it doesn’t have red eyes, it’s not a snapper!”
The cafe
The girls who work in the market cafe – where you can get a monster breakfast for £7 – are in limbo waiting for the closure date.
The cafe is open from 3am till noon.
And Wendy Patel has been there every day at 4am for 22 years.
“I can’t afford to retire and I don’t want to sit at home in the house,” says Wendy whose colleagues include Victoria Grigolia from Lithuania.
“I have loved working here.
"There have been some great characters... some miserable ones, too!
“But we (the cafe) can’t afford to go to the new site.
"And so we are just waiting now for the letter that will tell us when we have to close.
“We will never find anywhere to work like this.”
What is happening to the old site?
The market will be knocked down to make way for a £500m redevelopment, known as the Smithfield scheme.
It will become one of the UK’s largest city centre regeneration schemes.
The unit next to the Bullring shopping centre will become a site for 2,000 new homes, a park as well as hotels, restaurants, shops and other commercial units.
Where will the new Wholesale Market be?
The address is The Hub, Witton Road, Witton B6 7EU.
It might seem far out, but that's less than three miles from Birmingham city centre.
At 250 metres long and 70 metres wide, the market’s floor space is more than twice that of Aston Villa’s nearby Villa Park pitch.
The new market measures 17,500 sq m - compared with 7,140 sq m (105 metres x 68 metres) for the ootball pitch.
The new wholesale site has 78 units altogether, all of which are the same size.
There are also nine warehouse uints, too.
The current Pershore Street site had always been council run, but its replacement will be a 50/50 partnership.
The market will be a place for wholesale customers to buy and take produce away from between 3.30am till 11.30am every weekday and from 3.30am to 9.30pm on Saturdays.
After each opening the site will close for an hour while it is comprehensively cleaned, ready to reopen in the early afternoon for deliveries.
There will also be a newsagent, cafe (when let) and it is expected the site will support 400 jobs.
For more information about it click here
Exhibition
A Wholesale Memory Exhibition is running until April 7, 2018 in the third floor gallery at the Library of Birmingham.
The Friction Arts event celebrates both the Wholesale and Sunday Markets.
There will be an official VIP launch event on February 20 and the Lord Mayor of Birmingham Coun Anne Underwood will visit it on March 6.
Why is the market moving?
After the city council originally decided to try to close the Wholesale Market in 2011, the move to a new site out of the city centre was confirmed in March, 2013 and was originally forecast to happen in 2016.
A spokesman said in 2011: "The council has always stated that 2013 is a realistic time frame to complete a search for a new wholesale markets site. If, for whatever reason, this is not achieved, traders will not be forced to shut up shop.
"A deadline does not exist, however, it must be recognised that the current wholesale markets are nearly 40 years old and are not a viable long-term solution.”
Because there was said to be no alternative temporary site for the market if Pershore Street was to be redeveloped either for the market or for the other uses now planned, a return to the city centre was ruled out.
Alternative sites considered by the city council included Saltley and Washwood Heath but in the end The Hub at Witton was the preferred option.
Max Philip, general manager of the new Birmingham Wholesale Market Co says: “The old site has been run by the city council.
"This one is a 50-50 partnership between the council and Birmingham Wholesale Fresh Produce Association.
“Pershore Street was laid out very differently, too.
“I think this will be a lot better.
"Everyone is optimistic and looking forward to coming over and is now starting to get a feel for the environment."