Highly successful first year for the AtlasFram Group

AtlasFram Group, the UK’s largest farmer-owned farm inputs purchasing and crop marketing business, achieved a turnover of £149.34 million during the 12-months to 30th June 2009, its first year of operation.

Addressing members attending the Group’s Annual General Meeting in East Anglia, Chairman Robert Rous said: "This places us in the highest bracket of like businesses. Whilst turnover is not the ultimate measure of success for a company which exists to purchase farm inputs/services as cheaply as possible, the increasing commitment of our farmer members confirms that we are successfully meeting their requirements and that they want to deal with us.

"Since the merger of Atlas Agriculture and Framlingham Farmers on 1st July 2008 we have achieved one of the key objectives for it, namely the ability to offer a wider portfolio of products and services without increasing the cost of membership. The value which we offer is underlined by the fact that during the year almost 30 new members joined the Group, including a number of very large, highly-commercial farming businesses. We now represent over 1000 members farming more than 300,000 hectares throughout the UK, deal directly with 1400 suppliers and market over 160,000 tonnes of our members’ combinable crops.

"In a year which was characterised by extreme volatility in farm input and output prices, the AtlasFram Group achieved a surplus of £132,000, after tax.

Our wholly-owned subsidiary Framtrade Ltd continued to increase sales of bulk and bottled LPG gas, fuel, electricity and stock items to the public and other farming groups. The surplus directly benefits AtlasFram members and has increased Group financial reserves to £2.35 million, which enables us to maintain our excellent credit rating, maintains supplier confidence, provides continuing access to credit account facilities and allows us to negotiate from a position of financial strength. Suppliers are able and willing to offer us better terms because we are a well-established, financially-secure business."

Ian Watson, Chief Executive, added: "During the AtlasFram Group’s first year our priorities were to retain existing members and levels of service, whilst ensuring that suppliers continued to support us. Consequently, this has been a period of consolidation in what has been a very challenging time for farmers.

However, despite unprecedented market volatility, we have still been able to save members money on input purchases and offer expert advice to help them to purchase inputs and market their combinable crops at the most opportune time, which is becoming an increasingly important factor in farming profitably.

"That achieved, we are focusing on further developing the business to offer an even higher level of service and enable our farmer/landowner members to achieve optimum costs of production. The policy of working with independent agronomists, where advice and supply are separated, continues to be very successful, keeping us in close contact with the market and helping us to supply the right products at the right price.

"The aim of the buying group is to purchase products as competitively as possible and not be turnover-led. During the last 12 months we have conducted 45 price comparisons between non-Member and Member farms, which demonstrate savings on inputs costs of 8%-21% for crop protection products, up to 10% on feed and 25% for dairy hygiene products. Members also enjoy considerable savings on fertiliser and fuel, together with 5%-11% on cereal seed and up to 20% on maize seed. Additionally, very significant savings are available on machinery, spare parts, feed, together with livestock requisites.

"Going forward, our objective is to be the leading agriculture services provider in terms of customer service levels and member benefits, with a scale of agricultural purchasing which exerts significant influence over national markets. We also aim to develop our combinable crop services to enable us to access preferential regional supply contracts and highly-competitive trading services. AtlasFram Group also seeks to develop business partnerships with like- minded groups and key suppliers to further benefit members."