Warburtons Contract

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
That's got to really hurt Openfield, they haven't been having much luck lately and Frontier have been cherry picking their crown jewels ........
 

Jdunn55

Member
Its interesting to read as an outside who has never grown corn other than wholecrop, that warburtons source x amount from Canada, surely instead of removing the contract from open field they could have kept it and given a new contract to frontier and cancelled the contract to Canada? That way the british flag on their bread might actually mean something. Just seems a bit strange to me as beef farmer, it would be the equivalent of buying a pack of 6 pork chops with the british logo and red tractor logo etc and then finding out 4 were from the UK and 2 from China??
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
That's got to really hurt Openfield, they haven't been having much luck lately and Frontier have been cherry picking their crown jewels ........

I can't bring myself to "like" your post but I agree. Camgrain giving their marketing to Frontier was a massive blow to Openfield. 1 million tonnes of marketing gone overnight. Camgrain had nailed them to the floor the previous time they had put the marketing out to tender.

Its interesting to read as an outside who has never grown corn other than wholecrop, that warburtons source x amount from Canada, surely instead of removing the contract from open field they could have kept it and given a new contract to frontier and cancelled the contract to Canada? That way the british flag on their bread might actually mean something. Just seems a bit strange to me as beef farmer, it would be the equivalent of buying a pack of 6 pork chops with the british logo and red tractor logo etc and then finding out 4 were from the UK and 2 from China??

Warburtons also need to blend in a higher grade of wheat into the grist than can be grown in UK presently. The % of Canadian Red used varied from year to year depending on the quality of the UK contracted tonnage. Hovis (Premier Foods) was the brand that flew the Union Jack, not Warburtons.
 

Jdunn55

Member
I can't bring myself to "like" your post but I agree. Camgrain giving their marketing to Frontier was a massive blow to Openfield. 1 million tonnes of marketing gone overnight. Camgrain had nailed them to the floor the previous time they had put the marketing out to tender.



Warburtons also need to blend in a higher grade of wheat into the grist than can be grown in UK presently. The % of Canadian Red used varied from year to year depending on the quality of the UK contracted tonnage. Hovis (Premier Foods) was the brand that flew the Union Jack, not Warburtons.
Thanks, just seemed strange to me, but I'm not in the grain growing business, I much prefer getting s*** on by cows than factories..
 

Renaultman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Darlington
I can't bring myself to "like" your post but I agree. Camgrain giving their marketing to Frontier was a massive blow to Openfield. 1 million tonnes of marketing gone overnight. Camgrain had nailed them to the floor the previous time they had put the marketing out to tender.



Warburtons also need to blend in a higher grade of wheat into the grist than can be grown in UK presently. The % of Canadian Red used varied from year to year depending on the quality of the UK contracted tonnage. Hovis (Premier Foods) was the brand that flew the Union Jack, not Warburtons.
I have had some nice loads of UK wheat on in my time but Canadian milling wheat was something else. ( To the eye)
 

JCfarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
warks
It is a real shame, I get on well with Openfield generally and grow Crusoe for Warburtons.
Its not a bad contract, the only down side is you have to put towards 50% of your tonnage in a pool and then they only take the rest at certain times of the year when they have a window which could be months later.
Frontier have shat on farmers regarding importing substandard shite OSR and holding the uk price down?
I'm not sure I want to deal with them.
 

Fubar

Member
Not good news at all. Always find openfield a pleasure to deal with. They always seem to be on the farmers side. Probably why Warburtons dumped them. They can look forward to more cut throat deals and plenty of imports if prices get too high. British, farmer owned co ops loosing out to aAmerican owned super conglomerate is imho not good for british farming. It's a shame because Warburtons struck me as similar type family owned business with decent ethics. Maybe that's just the Peter Kay ads.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
We will see. Frontier getting too big imo. @ajd132 you are always on about big companies selling to you regarding inputs, now another big company is buying your output............
Yes agree. Although There’s more I can do about what goes in but unless I start going artisan it’s harder on what goes out. But I agree with what your saying and I can see how I may come across hypocritical.
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
I think this must be a good thing for those of us who are in storage co-ops with grain marketed by frontier?

It wasn’t many years ago that the Camgrain disciples were truly wedded to Openfield. What upset the relationship? Was it Network Grain ...... which didn’t really work out the way they wanted it to.
 
absolutely tragic. why swap a sound co-op who have been serving them well for a bunch of millenials in short trousers?
They may have been serving them well for many years, however I expect Warburtons are looking the the risk in their supply chain?

Can you imagine the damage to their business if openfield went under. Especially if it was a high price year and they had to go to the open market and buy in their requirements at £30 above the contract price.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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