Larger-than-life Lance Forman is a consummate entertainer as he shows me around his East End salmon smoking factory. Cracking jokes as we put on overalls, rubber gloves and hair nets, he points to two large fish-drying facilities made by the German firm Reich.
‘If I’d bought another one it’d be the third Reich,’ the 62-year-old quips, with his trademark edgy humour.
His business, H Forman and Son, has been in London’s Docklands since 1905, and clients include Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, the Ivy and the Orient Express. Mark Hix, who was chef director at the restaurant group Caprice, said the fish was the best in the business and he wouldn’t buy from anybody else. It is a staple on many a Christmas table.
Forman is passionate about the family firm and talks me through its history as we tour the factory floor – weaving between women and men holding very sharp knives.
The walls are littered with pictures of the East End from the turn of the 20th Century, when the Docklands saw a wave of Jewish immigrants, many escaping Tsarist Russia and later Germany. His great-grandfather, Aaron ‘Harry’ Forman and his brother Louis were part of that journey, having fled pogroms in Odesa before starting the firm that would last for more than a century. The business is in Lance’s blood.
‘I remember my dad would take me in at the weekends,’ he says. ‘He taught me to carve smoked salmon at the age of six.’
Troubled waters: Lance on the factory floor at H Forman and Son, which was hit in the Budget
The smell of the fresh fish is sharp and immediately wakes the senses. The temperature inside the factory is near zero and entrails are strewn on the floor.
It’s a buzzy place with local workers, as well as from Eastern Europe – Cockneys and Poles hollering to each other as fish is carved, smoked, dried and packaged for the genteel customers.
The salmon comes from Scotland, and is salted and air-dried to give its smoky, delicate texture.
Each worker has one role and the work is hard, efficient and fast.
‘Salmon became a gourmet food in this country at the start of the 20th Century because of the way people like my granddad smoked it,’ he says. ‘The London cure is something the East European Jews who settled in the East End brought over with them. Smoking fish was something they knew.’
Christmas is the busiest time of year for Forman and it is crucial he hits sales targets over the next few weeks – half the annual online turnover is done during the period. Wholesale Christmas sales are double those of a typical month.
I ask him what kind of revenue he pulls in over the period.
‘How much money have you got in your bank account?’ he shoots back. ‘We don’t publicly disclose the figures but the business isn’t as big as you think.’
That may be so, but the factory is large: thousands of square feet straddling the bank on Fish Island near the Olympic stadium. The company employs 60 staff.
The original factory burnt down in 1998 and the firm had to move in 2007 after the old site was developed for the Olympics in 2012.
‘You learn how to deal with that. I always tell business students, have a plan but be flexible for unexpected events,’ he says.
No fan of the Labour Government or Chancellor Rachel Reeves, he thinks Keir Starmer and his cohorts have made a terrible start. He says: ‘People were hoping they’d be different but they’ve got no clue. It has quickly and totally unravelled.’
He is genuinely fearful that businesses like his might have to close after the Chancellor’s Budget two months ago left UK plc down in the dumps about the future.
He says farmers are stealing the headlines at the moment because of Jeremy Clarkson and their tractors rolling through London. However, he says the biggest threat is to family firms like his.
Business relief, which was introduced by a Labour Government almost 50 years ago, allows company shareholders to leave business assets to loved ones without paying inheritance tax.
But, in a sweeping change that will take effect in April 2026, full business relief will only apply to the first £1 million of a business’s assets upon a shareholder’s death, with everything above this subject to 20 per cent tax. The relief is crucial especially for firms that already have big overheads.
Forman’s has an electricity bill of £400,000 a year, up from £100,000 before the Russia-Ukraine war started.
‘I feel threatened by it,’ he says of Labour’s changes. ‘The number one reason why family businesses decide to give it all up is because the owners decide they don’t need the hassle any more.’
For now, none of his three children look like taking over the firm – one works in media, the other is a rabbi, his daughter is an actress. He says: ‘Who knows? Maybe like salmon they’ll come back.’
He himself had a career before taking over the family firm, training as an accountant at PwC after Cambridge University. His first job was valuing the Polish car industry. He says: ‘It was the first ever privatisation in the whole of Eastern Europe. I was the first ever accountant to translate Polish accounts into an international format. That’s my claim to fame.’
After that he had a brief spell in 1991 as a special advisor to Business Secretary Peter Lilley.
His big hatred other than rising taxes is red tape. His blood is boiling as he tells me about the hoops he has to jump through to run his salmon empire from the East End.
‘We had this customer come around and he said, ‘Can we see your floor cleaning schedules?’
Forman replied: ‘We don’t have schedules.’ So he asked: ‘How do we know you cleaned the floor?’
‘Well look at the floor,’ Forman told him. ‘We wonder why our productivity is out the window. It’s because we are doing all this stuff that adds no value.’
He is a big believer that if Britain freed itself from endless regulation the country would be more productive and companies could save on labour costs.
He lives in North London with his wife Rene Anisfeld and tells me how he was banned from driving two years ago. He now takes public transport to work even though his ban has ended.
‘I was banned because of too many times doing 23mph in a 20mph zone. Driving in London now is absolutely miserable.’
He calls Elon Musk’s appointment as an anti-red tape guru in the US ‘interesting’.
The hatred of bureaucracy helps explain his pro-Brexit standpoint and very public backing of the Reform Party and Nigel Farage – although he has some harsh words for the now MP for Clacton.
‘Farage is not a team player. Throughout his history he wants to take people on board, but when they come on board he feels threatened by them. And it never works out. It’s a big issue for him and Reform UK.’
And with that he’s off again on his mission to get business done, one smoked salmon at a time.
DIY INVESTING PLATFORMS
Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence.