Warburtons Contract

I was wrong ....Openfield did lose money. Looking on companies house at their most recent full accounts made up to 30th June 2019 (filed 31st May 2020). They made "A loss before tax of £2,767k"


That said you would never know that from reading the Executive Statement that does not seem to mirror the numbers? Also different to the Farmers Weekly article (thank you @Farmer Barleymow ).... am I missing something???
 

JCfarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
warks
OSR growing in the UK is in big decline and they need to import to maintain production.
No imports means the crushers close. Is that what you want?

How will that help if we learn how to grow it again in a couple of years?

If you still had OSR left on your farm unwanted by any buyer I could understand your comments but the fact that they needed uk rape to blend with the imported must have been good for UK sales.

The price paid for osr is not set by a boat arriving in Liverpool.

It bloody well does influence price when its not produced to the same standard as ours!
Perhaps you should try and market ours as produced to a higher standard, Bee friendly locally produced rather than blend it with crap after all your marketing it for a fee.
Its like a chicken pie made with 50% free range chicken and 50% chlorinated!:ROFLMAO:
 
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lloyd

Member
Location
Herefordshire
It bloody well does influence price when its not produced to the same standard as ours!
Perhaps you should try and market it ours as produced to a higher standard, Bee friendly locally produced rather than blend it with crap after all your marketing it for a fee.
Its like a chicken pie made with 50% free range chicken and 50% chlorinated!:ROFLMAO:


They didn't even want to take UK rape on several months as they were too busy
dealing with their imports.
Double standards this looks like the future.
 

homefarm

Member
Location
N.West
It bloody well does influence price when its not produced to the same standard as ours!
Perhaps you should try and market it ours as produced to a higher standard, Bee friendly locally produced rather than blend it with crap after all your marketing it for a fee.
Its like a chicken pie made with 50% free range chicken and 50% chlorinated!:ROFLMAO:

Ors is priced the same around the world I think, the fact that our governments make our cost of production higher is irrelevant to the price offered in the UK.
What will make a difference our price is if UK osr is priced delivered Germany because all the UK crushers are closed.

You could add value to your bee friendly OSR by cold crushing it bottling it finding a market for it etc.

Then you might have a better idea on marketing and be happy to just load it on a lorry.
 

Look at the replies to this Ill informed tweet. Hundreds of people saying they will boycott warburtons for moving to a company thatmarket grain for numerous farmer owned central stores.

I have just read this and cant believe it! Regardless of opinions on Frontier or Openfield etc, Olly Harrison as a UK farmer should be ashamed of himself. He has let his poorly worded tweet get hijacked by misinformed people now looking to boycot Warburtons products as they think US GM wheat will be replacing UK wheat and UK farmers will suffer. Others are subsequently blaming Brexit etc etc... yet Olly Harrison does not jump in to paint a picture of facts to protect our industry or remove his tweet that has clearly been derailed... very iresponsible in my opinion.

In reality, rightly or wrongly, Warburtons have simply decided to change their UK wheat supplier.
 
I was wrong ....Openfield did lose money. Looking on companies house at their most recent full accounts made up to 30th June 2019 (filed 31st May 2020). They made "A loss before tax of £2,767k"


That said you would never know that from reading the Executive Statement that does not seem to mirror the numbers? Also different to the Farmers Weekly article (thank you @Farmer Barleymow ).... am I missing something???

Openfield Group s owned by farmers and made a profit as reported in FW. Ag is a subsidiary of Group and the subsidiary reported the loss. That must mean another part of the group made a profit £3,267k balancing out the overall group into a £600k profit. I guess it's down to any business to choose how it structures itself but it's profitable and to suggest otherwise would be unwise. You'd have to look up their group numbers on the Financial Conduct Authority Mutual Public Register.
 

texas pete

Member
Location
East Mids
Gawd I look at Frontiers wikipedia page and it reminds me of Monsanto!
Refering to the "just on spec blended rubbish", it was Frontier importing utter shite OSR BY THE LARGE SHIP load and having to blend it with UK grown(to a far higher standard with no neonics etc etc) and holding the price down for osr in this country.
homefarm you most certainly are running with the fox and hunting with the hounds, love the name by the way. Great PR! (y);)
I don't see Openfield doing that with our combinables.

Frontier, the Vampire Squid (ala Goldman Sachs) of the grain marketing world.

Very brave of these few enlightened competitors, posting anonymously, talking Openfield down.
 

JCfarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
warks
Ors is priced the same around the world I think, the fact that our governments make our cost of production higher is irrelevant to the price offered in the UK.
What will make a difference our price is if UK osr is priced delivered Germany because all the UK crushers are closed.

You could add value to your bee friendly OSR by cold crushing it bottling it finding a market for it etc.

Then you might have a better idea on marketing and be happy to just load it on a lorry.

Trouble is its not Bee friendly because there is bugger all OSR about for Bees to feed on and pollinate.
Your going to need a bigger boat!(y)
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
I have just read this and cant believe it! Regardless of opinions on Frontier or Openfield etc, Olly Harrison as a UK farmer should be ashamed of himself. He has let his poorly worded tweet get hijacked by misinformed people now looking to boycot Warburtons products as they think US GM wheat will be replacing UK wheat and UK farmers will suffer. Others are subsequently blaming Brexit etc etc... yet Olly Harrison does not jump in to paint a picture of facts to protect our industry or remove his tweet that has clearly been derailed... very iresponsible in my opinion.

In reality, rightly or wrongly, Warburtons have simply decided to change their UK wheat supplier.
Olly Harrison is also On the nfu combineable crops board and on the red tractor combineables board
 
Openfield Group s owned by farmers and made a profit as reported in FW. Ag is a subsidiary of Group and the subsidiary reported the loss. That must mean another part of the group made a profit £3,267k balancing out the overall group into a £600k profit. I guess it's down to any business to choose how it structures itself but it's profitable and to suggest otherwise would be unwise. You'd have to look up their group numbers on the Financial Conduct Authority Mutual Public Register.

Thank you for clarifying. I didn't realise the structure. Does anyone know which parts of the business are "Group" and which parts are "Ag"... e.g. which parts are profitable / not?

Clearly they are doing something right in the mix.
 
Thank you for clarifying. I didn't realise the structure. Does anyone know which parts of the business are "Group" and which parts are "Ag"... e.g. which parts are profitable / not?

Clearly they are doing something right in the mix.

That's hard to know of any business, Frontier and other merchants included. To me it looks like Openfield are a cooperative doing thier bit for British farmers, without shareholders and all that entails.
 

JCfarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
warks
Velcourts work in partnership with Openfield, if that ends I may get nervous but at the moment that speaks volumes to me!
I will stick with a British company for British Farmers even more so when multinational competitors are trying talk it down, scaremonger and put farmers off from using it for marketing their crops.
 

Honest john

Member
Location
Fenland
I was wrong ....Openfield did lose money. Looking on companies house at their most recent full accounts made up to 30th June 2019 (filed 31st May 2020). They made "A loss before tax of £2,767k"


That said you would never know that from reading the Executive Statement that does not seem to mirror the numbers? Also different to the Farmers Weekly article (thank you @Farmer Barleymow ).... am I missing something???
Openfield Group.
Openfield Agriculture LTD.
 

Honest john

Member
Location
Fenland
I have just read this and cant believe it! Regardless of opinions on Frontier or Openfield etc, Olly Harrison as a UK farmer should be ashamed of himself. He has let his poorly worded tweet get hijacked by misinformed people now looking to boycot Warburtons products as they think US GM wheat will be replacing UK wheat and UK farmers will suffer. Others are subsequently blaming Brexit etc etc... yet Olly Harrison does not jump in to paint a picture of facts to protect our industry or remove his tweet that has clearly been derailed... very iresponsible in my opinion.

In reality, rightly or wrongly, Warburtons have simply decided to change their UK wheat supplier.
And the Openfield contract has a YEAR to run Still.
 

agricontract

Member
Location
Merseyside
18 months about left to run on contract
Wouldn’t you think after a 27 year partnership warbourtons would have had some discussion about there intentions?
all the time we talk about fairness in the supply chain now all we have done is added another layer of skimmers to take a slice Fronteer is owned by Cargill and abf which there whole remit is to make a profit for there share holders
Can some one tell me what is factually incorrect with my tweet
Oh yes I am on the nfu crops board and red tractor board which means 2 things
Number 1 I want uk farmers to have a fair deal
And number 2 I know a lot of what goes on in the trade
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
I have just read this and cant believe it! Regardless of opinions on Frontier or Openfield etc, Olly Harrison as a UK farmer should be ashamed of himself. He has let his poorly worded tweet get hijacked by misinformed people now looking to boycot Warburtons products as they think US GM wheat will be replacing UK wheat and UK farmers will suffer. Others are subsequently blaming Brexit etc etc... yet Olly Harrison does not jump in to paint a picture of facts to protect our industry or remove his tweet that has clearly been derailed... very iresponsible in my opinion.

In reality, rightly or wrongly, Warburtons have simply decided to change their UK wheat supplier.

Think you are being a bit hard on Olly Harrison. He was expressing his opinion in the original tweet. Not much he can do about the way it’s been twisted afterwards. In isolation the tweet is not offensive and an expression of his feelings.
 

Badshot

Member
Location
Kent
If open-field were showing massive profits we'd all be shouting about how they were profiteering at our expense.
They're operating overall in the black, far enough to be sound , which means we're getting as much out of it as a co-op as we can.

I'm still disappointed with Warburton's for pulling the rug.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Think you are being a bit hard on Olly Harrison. He was expressing his opinion in the original tweet. Not much he can do about the way it’s been twisted afterwards. In isolation the tweet is not offensive and an expression of his feelings.
Then Olly should try and put right the hundreds of people who have misunderstood his tweet and think warburtons are now importing American gm wheat. Despite good intentions this sort of thing could have ramifications for U.K. farmers. The power of social media and how it can go wrong Very quickly.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

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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