NWF Agriculture Limited has grown to be a leading national supplier and distributor of ruminant animal feed to 4,400 customers in the UK.
Feeds
NWF provides nutritional advice to farmers across the country with over 41 trained nutritional advisors analysing forage and farmers’ objectives to deliver feed to optimise performance. Feed is then produced from mills across the UK and delivered directly to farmers, with the majority of the business being dairy, but also supporting beef and sheep farmers.
Normalised market conditions and effective operational management have created efficiencies, delivering a solid result.
Andrew Downie, Managing Director, Feeds
Our strategy
- Utilise national operations platform
- Increase market share through continued investment in NWF Sales Academy
- Increase product range offering to existing customer base
- Optimising our sales model for direct-to-farm and wholesale customers
252
people
499,000
tonnes of feed delivered
48
trucks
14
trailers
Our Feeds locations
- Wardle
- Aspatria
- Longtown
- Wixland
Review of the year
Total feed volume decreased by 2.9% to 499,000 tonnes (2023: 514,000 tonnes). This reflected the ideal grass growing conditions across the summer and autumn which provided farmers with significant forage stocks for the winter. This was partly mitigated by the wet winter and spring which extended the usual winter season demand into April. The overall ruminant market volume increased by 1.4%, according to DEFRA data.
Following extremely volatile prices in the prior year, FY24 saw very stable commodity prices with a basket of commodities1 only moving within a range of 15% in the year (2023: 29%). This volatility in the prior year was driven by uncertainty around the Ukraine war and its material impact on agricultural commodity markets.
Revenue was lower at £195.1 million (2023: £225.8 million) reflecting mainly lower commodity prices. Headline operating profit was £2.6 million (2023: £3.9 million) with the prior year having benefited from record high milk prices and volatility in commodity prices. With the normalisation in the market, and the significant increase in electricity costs, the business focused on effective management of both margin and the operational cost base.
We have continued investment in the NWF Academy in which new trainees engage on an 18-month structured training programme to become future NWF nutritionists. The Academy has recruited a fifth group to the programme, which has been well received across the industry. Graduates of the programme are now developing as successful nutritionists in our national sales team.
The average milk price for the year of 38.0p per litre compared to an average in the prior year of 46.9p per litre. The peak milk price in the year was 39.2p per litre compared to a record high of 51.6p per litre in the prior year. At the end of the financial year the milk price was stable at 38.1p per litre. Milk production was 0.8% lower at 12.3 billion litres (2023: 12.4 billion litres).
Feeds has a very broad customer base, working with over 4,400 farmers across the UK. This base, and the underlying robust demand for milk and dairy products, results in a reasonably stable overall demand for ruminant feed deliveries in most market conditions.
1 A basket of commodities consists of the weighted average raw material spot price for 12 standard ingredients of a basic ruminant diet.
Focus on:
Reducing our carbon emissions
Our Feeds team continues to innovate to produce products which help its customers achieve higher milk yields, better cattle growth rate and higher lambing percentages. They work with their customers to provide the public with safe, high quality food with high welfare standards, produced in a sustainable manner.
Paul Mardell, our Feeds Technical Development Manager, said: ‘We are working closely with our customers to meet the challenges and recognise the benefits of addressing public demand for reduced carbon products. Farmers are also recognising that reducing carbon emissions per litre of milk or kilogram of meat and improving efficiency and profitability are not mutually exclusive.’ He continued, ‘Our Carbon Reduction Project is aimed at driving carbon emission reduction throughout our supply chain, from sourcing and manufacturing, to use on farms. Focused training is provided to our sales teams, starting at our Academy, to ensure we are able to deliver quality advice to farmers’.
But the Feeds’ Carbon Reduction Project doesn’t just stop at the farm gate; environmental and efficiency gains are being delivered across our mills, with wind energy generated through the Aspatria site and Longtown’s solar panels producing over 86,000 kWh of energy per year.