1981 – 2021


Forty Years of Feed Compounder Then and Now


By Andrew Mounsey, Editor


This January/February 2021 issue marks the fortieth anniversary of Feed Compounder.


The magazine was launched by my parents, Howard and Jane Mounsey, in January 1981 although the company they set up to publish it, HGM Publications, was established a few months earlier.


HGM Publications took its title from my father’s initials (his middle name being Grahame). The launch represented a huge leap of faith by them, as Howard was giving up a secure job as Deputy Director General of


the newly formed trade association representing the interests of the UK’s agricultural supply trade sector. UKASTA, as the association was then known (today it is the AIC or Agricultural Industries Confederation) had been formed from the merger


not enjoy working under the new regime and his mind turned to what he could do to keep a roof over his family’s heads and keep himself in gainful employment from that point (he was in his late forties) until he was ready to retire. He really didn’t have a longer time horizon in mind than that. At the time (I was 17 years old) I remember being blithely confident


that the venture would succeed. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that I can appreciate quite how brave a step it was to have taken. Not only was Howard giving up a secure and reasonably well-paid job, he was also walking away from a final salary pension scheme. They had a mortgage, no great savings, no prospect of any inheritance – it really was ‘do or die’, in financial terms at least. It should also be recalled that the early 1980s was not exactly the most propitious of times to be launching a new company; the UK was still very much the sick man of Europe which only a few years previously had had to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bail out. Entrepreneurship was not then the mainstream option it is seen as today. Using their equity in the house as security for a business loan which


had to be put in place in case the early issues cost more to produce than they were able to provide by way of revenue, the Rubicon was


Howard and Jane Mounsey in 1981


of CAFMNA (representing compound feed manufacturers) and BASAM (representing seed and agricultural merchants).


Howard’s boss at CAFMNA, Desmond Bird, with whom he had


an excellent relationship, would become one of Feed Compounder’s earliest regular contributors as author of ‘Screenings’ by Gleaner. This column was written under a pseudonym to allow Desmond to comment on sometimes controversial topics with a candour which might have been difficult had his identity been known. Before the magazine was launched, Desmond had decided that the completion of the merger would provide the ideal timing for him to step aside and retire, leaving the field clear for the Director General from BASAM, Vaughan Wilshaw, to become the number one at the newly enlarged association. Howard was a Yorkshireman born and bred, and his no-nonsense plain speaking approach to life and work could fairly be said to be characteristic of his native county; his new boss was cut from an altogether different cloth. Before long, it became clear to Howard that (to put it politely) he would


Top: The front cover of the first ever issue of Feed Compounder and (right) an Opinion column from December 1981 with the EEC and CAP once again taking centre stage


PAGE 30 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 FEED COMPOUNDER


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72