Frontier Fengrain tie up??

Shutesy

Moderator
Arable Farmer
I was there today, I probably saw you but didn’t recognise you!
Quite interesting I thought.

Lemon cheesecake was nice
Yes was a good couple of hours and had a good chat with my agronomist and a few other chaps. Thought all the talks were informative and I left thinking about a number of different things (after a quick stroll round the hanger). Liked how upbeat they were about the future and any upcoming Brexit issues!
Thumbs up for the lemon cheesecake from me as well (y):hungry:
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Oh Lordy, Barts and rotten Appel then! What car do you drive;)

A foreign car of course! :D I couldn't afford a British built & owned brand - too expensive and I'd need 2 because 1 would be broken down all the time... Yes, I get the irony. Or is it hypocrisy? I sell grain to Barts, Robin Appel, Gleadell, Saxon, Glencore, Cefetra and Frontier. I haven't done any trade with Openfield for a couple of years for my own reasons, including them being £2-3/t under the rest every time I've been quoted. I can't afford that kind of home support on 5500 tonnes/year.

I'm just saying that we have a choice in who we deal with, that's all.
 

Banana Bar

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bury St Edmunds
I rate Frontier above all others, superb service from sale to payment. One of my contract farms has a decent tonnage in Fengrain, to say I’m relieved that Frontier are now involved is a massive understatement. I’ve been VERY worried about Fengrains results and stability for a few years.
I am seriously considering giving all of my grain to Frontier and one other to market.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Seems the membership didn’t in this case! The letter states the board made the decision based on a pre determined criteria. The decision has been made for them!
The point of a board is to make decisions for the membership. You can't put the sensitive information Needed to make a decision like this out to groups of hundreds of farmers and expect it to stay confidential.
 
The reason Openfield don't take their profits off to a foreign shareholder is because they haven't made profits lately. As others say - check Companies House records. Not trading with Frontier is a daft idea, it's like saying that you won't buy from Amazon.Just wait till we have block-chain data to deal with as well. Farming will move forward or go bust, time for self-serving thinking to change. Brexit will increase the rate of change. Darwin's rules will apply. Just saying.

You could say the same for many of the grain merchants this past year, However Openfield were created by farmers for farmers, so if more people supported Openfield then you may see consistency of a profit/better return. We are always hearing how we should support British agriculture, but I find it ironic that there seems to be little support for a company that supports British agriculture owned by British farmers.
 

Widgetone

Member
Trade
Location
Westish Suffolk
You could say the same for many of the grain merchants this past year, However Openfield were created by farmers for farmers, so if more people supported Openfield then you may see consistency of a profit/better return. We are always hearing how we should support British agriculture, but I find it ironic that there seems to be little support for a company that supports British agriculture owned by British farmers.
A fair point, but unfortunately the majority of farmers are so independent of each other that you never seem able to get to a consensus with grain marketing. I thought the original Centaur Grain were strong, but the model appeared to break down on the merged business. From the outside, it seems buying groups are more successful?
I think any grain business is about the relationship forged between buyer and seller, an old fashioned thing about trust, mutual respect, and good communication.
Simples!
 

willy

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Rutland
The problem as I see it is as follows. Just trading grain the safe way pays very little margin and so smaller company’s with low asset base or cash reserves pose a risk if they try to play the markets to make their margin bigger. So for the farmer the main thing is service and payment a quid here or there is nearly irrelevant.

Ask those who got nothing out of the Wellgrain f**kup what is their main factor now when selling grain.
 
You could say the same for many of the grain merchants this past year, However Openfield were created by farmers for farmers, so if more people supported Openfield then you may see consistency of a profit/better return. We are always hearing how we should support British agriculture, but I find it ironic that there seems to be little support for a company that supports British agriculture owned by British farmers.

I’d love to support OpenField, however their balance sheet frightens me to trade with them. There are also some massive salaries form what I gather and too much overpaid middle management.
 
True, but each merchant has specific contracts with specific end users which can add a nice tweak of 50p to £2 for particular specs of hards/soft/LGM etc etc, especially once you add in various geographical influences.

With the volume share that Frontier now have it puts them in a position where they can be more aggressive with winning this business? Even more so if they have access to a bigger unpriced pool of wheat?

They seem to like taking over the marketing agreements of Coop’s! They have CamGrain already locally, further afield they have access to Woldgrain and many others.

If they had a big enough market share they could influence the price into specific markets. Especially being as Cargill their owner are a consumer.
 
You could say the same for many of the grain merchants this past year, However Openfield were created by farmers for farmers, so if more people supported Openfield then you may see consistency of a profit/better return. We are always hearing how we should support British agriculture, but I find it ironic that there seems to be little support for a company that supports British agriculture owned by British farmers.

I don't buy into this "big bad multinational" argument. Frontier are investing more in British Agriculture than any other merchant in the industry today, surely that is good for us all, regardless of the businesses parentage?!

As for Frontier controlling the market due to scale... again I don't buy into this. Does anyone actually know their market share of UK Grain, I would be surprised if it is over 30% and probably less???

I still see the grain market as very competitive with plenty of options. As farmers if we don't like a certain merchant, we simply do not deal with them, with plenty of other options. I do however think that understanding businesses balance sheet is becoming more important when deciding who to market grain with and who to avoid even though they offer an extra 50p per tonne.

Undoubtedly there are both good and bad small and large grain businesses in the UK, and good and bad farmer owned businesses. Being farmer owned alone however does not make a business good... lets just look at some of the farmer owned co-op that have gone pop costing farmers considerable money (only recently Angus Cereals) and don't even get me started on some of the pool results of the farmer owned businesses.....
 

Farmerdunk

Member
Location
Hertfordshire
I don't buy into this "big bad multinational" argument. Frontier are investing more in British Agriculture than any other merchant in the industry today, surely that is good for us all, regardless of the businesses parentage?!

As for Frontier controlling the market due to scale... again I don't buy into this. Does anyone actually know their market share of UK Grain, I would be surprised if it is over 30% and probably less???

I still see the grain market as very competitive with plenty of options. As farmers if we don't like a certain merchant, we simply do not deal with them, with plenty of other options. I do however think that understanding businesses balance sheet is becoming more important when deciding who to market grain with and who to avoid even though they offer an extra 50p per tonne.

Undoubtedly there are both good and bad small and large grain businesses in the UK, and good and bad farmer owned businesses. Being farmer owned alone however does not make a business good... lets just look at some of the farmer owned co-op that have gone pop costing farmers considerable money (only recently Angus Cereals) and don't even get me started on some of the pool results of the farmer owned businesses.....

I believe there market share is 22% across the uk
 
I’d love to support OpenField, however their balance sheet frightens me to trade with them. There are also some massive salaries form what I gather and too much overpaid middle management.

And yet they are still here, Posting a profit this year from what I hear, I'd love to know your "Source" , seems like there are some well informed people out there. I hear a lot of farmers are over paid ;)
 
A fair point, but unfortunately the majority of farmers are so independent of each other that you never seem able to get to a consensus with grain marketing. I thought the original Centaur Grain were strong, but the model appeared to break down on the merged business. From the outside, it seems buying groups are more successful?
I think any grain business is about the relationship forged between buyer and seller, an old fashioned thing about trust, mutual respect, and good communication.
Simples!

Quite agree but buying groups won't sell your grain, they will just provide you with seed and fert that are from merchants anyway, sometimes even from some that you don't want to trade with but that doesn't matter as long as you get the product cheaper eh;)
 
I don't buy into this "big bad multinational" argument. Frontier are investing more in British Agriculture than any other merchant in the industry today, surely that is good for us all, regardless of the businesses parentage?!

As for Frontier controlling the market due to scale... again I don't buy into this. Does anyone actually know their market share of UK Grain, I would be surprised if it is over 30% and probably less???

I still see the grain market as very competitive with plenty of options. As farmers if we don't like a certain merchant, we simply do not deal with them, with plenty of other options. I do however think that understanding businesses balance sheet is becoming more important when deciding who to market grain with and who to avoid even though they offer an extra 50p per tonne.

Undoubtedly there are both good and bad small and large grain businesses in the UK, and good and bad farmer owned businesses. Being farmer owned alone however does not make a business good... lets just look at some of the farmer owned co-op that have gone pop costing farmers considerable money (only recently Angus Cereals) and don't even get me started on some of the pool results of the farmer owned businesses.....


At what point did I say Bad? Competition is healthy however its important to remember that co-ops are there to be a business for the farmer, not as much for self gain.

You would hope they are investing as they are the biggest.

The grain market is very competitive and yes there are plenty of options, I believe relationships are an important part of that and believe some merchants are really trying to support farmers and some are really not, that shows in Claim charges, cleaning, drying prices and options for out of spec grain etc etc however that's probably important to few where price is important to many and 50P could mean the difference.

Finally your last bit there... yeah its quite a mixed bag in the end isn't it.. lets take the mighty F's pool result this harvest for Wheat... Outstanding, left the others for dust, but also that means they * sold a lot of that tonnage late taking a gamble on the market, some may say that's a tad risky.

*Potentially

Cheers
 
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