Anglia Farmers pushes up turnover, volumes and surplus

Anglia Farmers’ business grew in volume last year and turnover rose 2.2% to £247.5m.

The group includes the purchasing co-operative Anglia Farmers and subsidiaries AF Affinity, AF Finance and AF Biomass.

In the year to 31 January the group produced an operating surplus of £802,000 compared with £641,000 the previous year.

After tax and payments to members, the surplus was £289,376 (£165,979 in 2013).

See also: Fuel price drop keeps lid on production costs

“The real growth in volumes during the year is masked by the large reductions in prices of key commodities such as fuel [down 21% in the year], fertiliser, cereal seed and animal feed,” said group chief executive Clarke Willis.

“These key product areas showed a volume growth on average of 5.5% during the year.”

AF Affinity’s turnover was more than £5.75m (£4.5m the previous year) and returned a pre-tax profit of £28,973 to the group.

This part of the business offers group purchasing to non-agricultural business through Affinity and to livestock farmers through FarmBuyer.

Peer-to-peer lending scheme AF Finance organised £5.7m of lending between AF members in the year.

The group’s straw marketing business, AF Biomass, supplies livestock farmers and biomass power stations, had revenues of £2.43m producing a profit of £3,140, following a loss the previous year.

It currently has 75,000t of business on its books for harvest 2015 and has contracts with new power stations.

The group has more than 3,000 members across the UK, farming more than 1.1m hectares. 

They represent 18% of the UK’s dairy farmers, almost half of the UK’s sugar beet crop and 37% of potatoes.

AF also manages the funding of the Edge Apprenticeship programme.