Openfield Group, the farmer-owned grain marketing and farm inputs business, has reported profits of £100,000 after a 'very challenging' year.
The co-operative reported the small profit for the year to 30 June 2021, compared to a profit of £400,000 in the year before.
Operating costs were reduced by 17.4% to £12.8 million, down from £15.5 million in 2020. Group revenues down 19.1% to £516m.
The fourth consecutive year of profit followed a "very challenging market conditions as a result of the poor 2020 harvest," Openfield said.
The 2020 harvest saw the UK’s annual wheat crop fall by 40%, despite one of the largest planting areas for barley, but that crop only saw a marginal increase due to poor yields.
Openfield said that inevitably, these volumes led to challenges with high import levels of wheat (2.4 million tonnes) and corn (2.8 million tonnes).
Millers were using around 32% grist from imported wheat, the prior year they were only using 15%, which led to one of the largest proportions seen in recent years.
Openfield noted that Brexit had led to stock piling in anticipation of trade disruption.
Oilseed rape produced another small crop compared to prior years leading to imports of 643,000 tonnes compared to the prior year of 416,000 tonnes.
Openfield’s chairman Philip Moody said: “I’m very pleased to see that we have maintained our profitability in a very challenging time.
"We delivered an outstanding result in a year where the industry faced unprecedented challenges from both a disastrous harvest and a global pandemic.
"We took pre-emptive action to reduce our costs significantly and this performance not only reflects well now, but it bodes well for the group’s future prospects.”
