Grain merchants feeling the draught too

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Fengrain have just invested a lot of money in storage and a new satellite office which explains most of their net loss. Their turnover was actually up overall.

Do merchants make more money in a volatile market? It seems that they've been chasing a few quid here & there for the last couple of years. We need merchants just as they need us. I'd hate to see the independents go and leave the big boys to corner the market. Frontier, Glencore, Gleadell, Cofco, Cefetra and Saxon all have parent companies with deep pockets. I don't trade with Openfield at the moment either but they are one of the last few major UK co-ops in the market.
 

nick...

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
south norfolk
I do,just about everything with them.visited frontier and a few others at cereals 2 years ago and they all promised to call but I’m still waiting
Nick...
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
Without prying, who does trade with openfield? I never hear of them on the farms I deal with, other than a bit of seed biz.

I do they have had everything that I don’t sell farm to farm for last 10 years.
But have just sold OSR to a new merchant and started a new relationship. In the current climate the differential was just too great.
 

AlfM

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Norfolk
Similar area to Nick and everything goes to them. Good relationship with buyer, good communication from transport office and individual drivers. We are within reach of local store so can tractor and trailer in at will over harvest when we need. They were always £1/ton less than Wellgrain...... Bit of a cloud recently thanks to a man with a few diggers trying to scupper grand plans for a huge new store. The longer it drags on the more you start to wonder if it will ever happen.
 
Similar area to Nick and everything goes to them. Good relationship with buyer, good communication from transport office and individual drivers. We are within reach of local store so can tractor and trailer in at will over harvest when we need. They were always £1/ton less than Wellgrain...... Bit of a cloud recently thanks to a man with a few diggers trying to scupper grand plans for a huge new store. The longer it drags on the more you start to wonder if it will ever happen.

Openfield building a new store?
 

Widgetone

Member
Trade
Location
Westish Suffolk
Similar area to Nick and everything goes to them. Good relationship with buyer, good communication from transport office and individual drivers. We are within reach of local store so can tractor and trailer in at will over harvest when we need. They were always £1/ton less than Wellgrain...... Bit of a cloud recently thanks to a man with a few diggers trying to scupper grand plans for a huge new store. The longer it drags on the more you start to wonder if it will ever happen.
Is a new store being planned in Norfolk then?
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
SO let's say £2 per tonne or £58 per truck load. A load of rapeseed is worth close to £10k and a merchant gets £58 margin.

For the £58 margin they take on the following:

  • Pay a farm trader to call farmers and buy the grain
  • Manage the currency risk
  • Manage the flat price risk
  • Sell the grain
  • Organise the transport
  • Sort out the assurance and sustainability paperwork
  • Sort out all the paperwork
  • Oh and then if a farmer refuses to load and the merchant has to haul from distance or be defaulted.....
No wonder the industry is in tatters!!
But they make a margin on every ton they sell......
And they don't pay for anything they don't fancy....

Too many admin on £ 50k
Too many traders on £100k +

This don't work with produce selling at 16th Century prices.....
 
But they make a margin on every ton they sell......
And they don't pay for anything they don't fancy....

Too many admin on £ 50k
Too many traders on £100k +

This don't work with produce selling at 16th Century prices.....

Do they? What if they have a sale on and can't get it covered, they then get squeezed and can make a loss......
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Do they? What if they have a sale on and can't get it covered, they then get squeezed and can make a loss......

Screenshot (252).png
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
Do they? What if they have a sale on and can't get it covered, they then get squeezed and can make a loss......

They shouldn’t take a position, they should cover all sales/purchases.

It is because Openfield took a position on milling wheat that caused a significant part of last years loss. Uncovered positions and risk make them little better than Viking in my book.
I don’t grow any milling wheat and as a customer am therefore exposed to risk that was nothing to do with me.
 

AlfM

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Norfolk
Is a new store being planned in Norfolk then?
It has come up against a very rich neighbour who doesn’t agree with it so has caused a lot of agro with planning. I’m unsure as to how far they’ve got although they did knock half the old site down maybe 2 years ago in anticipation of starting the new one, which in hindsight was rather odd.
 
It has come up against a very rich neighbour who doesn’t agree with it so has caused a lot of agro with planning. I’m unsure as to how far they’ve got although they did knock half the old site down maybe 2 years ago in anticipation of starting the new one, which in hindsight was rather odd.


Rather ironically, that rich neighbour got rich hiring plant to building sites just like the one that he’s objecting to.
 

carbonfibre farmer

Member
Arable Farmer
@AlfM I went past yesterday. Only up the road. Still nothing going on. Just big piles of rubble. Couple of sheds left but not much. Matey up the road opposes most things :rolleyes: (my brother an ardent NCFC fan, doesn't have much positive to say about him either)

We sell one lorry load a yr through them. Certainly not everything! Suspect same rep as @nick... ,he's pretty good. Does a very easy to follow weekly report (not that I always agree with the sentiment!)
 

Grain Buyer

Member
Location
Omnipresent
Which merchants pay 28 days after the last load on the contract is cleared? I heard something about moving say 3 loads in the first week and one load on the last day of the month resulting in nearly a month of credit? Was it Wellgrain or do others still have these terms??
 

AlfM

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Norfolk
@AlfM I went past yesterday. Only up the road. Still nothing going on. Just big piles of rubble. Couple of sheds left but not much. Matey up the road opposes most things :rolleyes: (my brother an ardent NCFC fan, doesn't have much positive to say about him either)

We sell one lorry load a yr through them. Certainly not everything! Suspect same rep as @nick... ,he's pretty good. Does a very easy to follow weekly report (not that I always agree with the sentiment!)
We all feed and they seem to have the deal into Burston sown up which allow us to tractor and trailer in over winter as some of our storage would leave lorry drivers pulling their hair out. Payment on the 14th of the month, and can advance if necessary. We don’t commit our tonnage to far in advance so could sell some elsewhere but seem to work well for us. No doubt it’s not worth the paper it’s written on but we do pay the premium for the protection should they go pop.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.1%
  • Up to 25%

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  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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