Banham Poultry

Widgetone

Member
Trade
Location
Westish Suffolk
BP are in the local news. Local MP tweeted they're in administration, then corrected himself when it became apparent they're up for sale, blaming market conditions.
Anyone shed any light?
 

robbie

Member
BASIS
Brother works for them on the farms side so worrying times ahead.

As an outsider looking in it does seem that all the chicken companies work on a sh!t or bust system. It seems every few years there's a big chicken company a bit shakey then out of the blue another comes along and takes over all the farms and speak of world domination only to then go tits up a few years down the line it's what's always happened for as long as I can remember.

Hopefully for all the poor People involved a buyer can be found.
 

JCMaloney

Member
Location
LE9 2JG
banham poultry has been sold

As above it was sold in a "pre-pack" deal to Chesterfield Poultry.

From the BBC website...............https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-46072412

"A creditors' report by the accountants Duff & Phelps said Banham had a total debt of £40m, owed to about 700 companies and organisations.

Lloyds Bank is owed £19.7m but is in line to be repaid £9m, according to the report.

It also found that trade creditors, which include chicken hatcheries, cleaning firms, transport companies and recruitment agencies, are owed £15m.

The company pension fund is owed £5.1m.

Trade creditors are likely to be repaid only four pence for every pound they are owed, according the administrators.

One farmer, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the BBC he had supplied chicks to Banham for many years.

He was owed "hundreds of thousands of pounds" and was expecting to receive "virtually nothing" from the administrators.

"The news [about Banham] came out of the blue," he said. "It's a big blow but we will have to try and trade our way out of it." "
 

Daniel

Member
So do Chesterfield poultry now own all the farms and factories etc, but none of the liabilities?

Then the directors of Chesterfield can asset strip the carcass of Banham, run the entire business into the ground over the next couple of years, declare the whole thing insolvent and walk away with the money squirreled away?
 

carbonfibre farmer

Member
Arable Farmer
So do Chesterfield poultry now own all the farms and factories etc, but none of the liabilities?

Then the directors of Chesterfield can asset strip the carcass of Banham, run the entire business into the ground over the next couple of years, declare the whole thing insolvent and walk away with the money squirreled away?
Well the site at attlebourgh was earmarked for a supermarket and a fair bit of housing.....wonder what'll happen there:rolleyes:
 

Widgetone

Member
Trade
Location
Westish Suffolk
How does a single farmer supplying chicks to Banham get to be owed ' hundreds of thousands of pounds ' ?
Deeply sympathetic, but good credit management should simply not allow that to happen.
 

chickens and wheat

Member
Mixed Farmer
The debt circle can easily occur in poultry business, processor doesnt pay you for a few loads of birds so you stay with him to make sure he pays , soon enough he drops another payment or two, you stick with him in blind hope of getting paid.
Eventually you end up taking the loss and bailing out.

I stick to selling to one large business , slightly less lucrative on paper, but I get payments not promises.
 

Chickcatcher

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
SG9
@Widgetone
Sadly credit managment dosen't really come into what probably happened. Been here in the past,
You have at least chicks and feed, too aquire these will come to somewhere near £1.25 per bird
other costs about 15p per bird and a bird at the end will be a value to you of £1.57
So when your crop of birds leave the farm you expect to be paid say for 100,000 birds (quite a lot of farms are way bigger than this) £157,000 and owe or have a cost to you of £140,000 now with the best will in the "World" nobody I know is paid in advance of birds leaving the farm and probably most payments will be made after a period of time lets put that in as (in my instant) max 25 days min 19 days.
Now at 25 days you are well into the next crop cycle perhaps as much as 13 days, so cost have started again and probably stand at £55,000.
The day you are due payment dosen't happen so when your crop of birds totals 100,000 chicks your bills to be paid will total best part of £2 per bird, Ok so you still have chicks 13 days old and at this stage nowhere to go! this is on Max 25 day payment terms, Yes you could take out credit insurance I never have myself.
That my "boy" is how very quickly you can be owed a lot of money when somebody you have produced for over many years and had lots of contact with and better payment terms than most in the "Ag World" goes wrong or have in some circumstances accepted payment terms well into 45, 60, 90 or even 120 day payment terms.
These payment terms going out so long into the future are only allowing a business to abuse you and leave you high and dry. Do any of the real bosses forgo there weekly wages to as long as 90 days or even 45. No you will probably find they are paid even before there employees, any way ahead of you!
 
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Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Some of the units round here are 10-15 sheds with up to 40,000 birds in each. They are all on the same cycle for disease reasons so each batch can be around .£75- 1.25 million. I believe some farmers have 40-50 sheds or more.
The figures are staggering, but the margins are not high, just relying on economies of scale.
 

chickens and wheat

Member
Mixed Farmer
Broiler production is very much watching money zip in and out of your account, and trying to catch and keep an amount of the whirlpool of monies.

I dont pay for day old chicks until they grow and are sold but feed is paid for 7 days after delivery, Much cheaper to borrow money from the bank than the feed company.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.1%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 67 35.3%
  • 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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