A year ago, it seemed like such a wonderful idea. We were all agog at the supposed potential of business-to-business Internet portals - and Fyffes, as a major player in the fresh produce industry, seemed to be in the perfect position to exploit this golden opportunity.

Since then, it has been disaster upon disaster for Fyffes. The credibility of the McCann family, members of which occupy the top three positions in the organisation, is coming under serious scrutiny.

Certainly it wasn't Fyffes' fault that the whole dot.com business went pear-shaped but it is arguable that the company became just a little bit arrogant when it came to dealing with the venture capitalists who were supposed to bankroll the development of the worldoffruit.com portal.

Fyffes felt that the venture capitalists wanted too much for too little and decided to fund the operation until such time as it could go ahead with a Nasdaq flotation. Unfortunately, when the dot.coms imploded, Fyffes found itself in the position that Nasdaq investors didn't want to touch worldoffruit.com and venture capitalists didn't feel like taking a second look.

The site might have achieved its trading targets for the year, but the harsh fact is that the 200 registered users of the portal got in for free and most of the trade was between companies within the Fyffes group. Profits warnings and the sour taste left by the windfall profits earned by DCC at the expense of the unsuspecting institutions that bought DCC's stake in Fyffes have also conspired to leave Fyffes friendless in the market.

It's an indication of how highly Fyffes shares are valued that the McCann family can buy eight million shares at €1.00 (£0.79) or less, one-quarter of their value last March.