Video: New Frontier boss talks growth amid arable downturn

Agronomy and grain trading group Frontier Agriculture is still in the market for growth through acquisition of other businesses, managing director Diana Overton has said in her first wide-ranging interview since stepping up to the top job.

Frontier, which posted revenue of £1.76bn and pre-tax profits of £40m for the year ending June 2024, will have a particular focus on growing the range of services and solutions that it can offer farmers, said Ms Overton.

“Frontier’s success to date has very much come about as a result of a combined strategy of acquisition and organic growth and I’m very keen to continue that approach,” she said.

See also: Revenue drops by 25% at Frontier but profits hold at £40m

“That said, the kind of acquisitions we’ve been concentrating on more recently we describe as our adjacency strategy, so looking for businesses or investment opportunities that not only complement Frontier’s core activities but also are meeting a need within our industry.”

As examples she cited Frontier’s stake in Oxbury Bank, which includes input finance among its products, and more recently in CCm Technologies, a Wiltshire-based firm producing energy-efficient fertiliser from agricultural and industrial waste.

Watch the full interview, the first in a new series of interviews with agribusiness leaders, here:

Frontier enjoys a 25% market share in both agronomy services and grain trading, with no other UK firm operating at that scale in both segments.

This gives the firm a natural hedge that protects profitability in years when grain prices are low and relatively static, making margins from trading thinner, she said.

However, growers are warning the firm that they are facing a cashflow squeeze arising from the current low prices, with “some farmers really struggling, not least because of the pause on the SFI scheme came very suddenly,” she said.

Ms Overton is just the second MD in Frontier’s 20-year history, succeeding Mark Aitchison, who was appointed to lead the new firm following its formation in 2004 with the merger of Banks Cargill Agriculture and Allied Grain.

She joined the business in 2012 as head of business development, after being recruited for her experience in mergers and acquisitions honed previously at AB Sugar.

Both companies share a parent in Associated British Foods (ABF) portfolio, although Frontier is a joint venture between ABF and global agribusiness Cargill, named by Forbes as the largest privately-owned company in the US.