Out and ABOUT Carrs


By Andrew Mounsey A Visit to


Billington Stone, Staffordshire


Out & About is sponsored by B2B Nutrition, suppliers of


www.b2bnutrition.co.uk


To Staffordshire, through the beautiful snow-covered hills of mid-Wales, on a cold February morning. Fabulous to look at, but not so clever for driving through. Fortunately my decision to eschew the 50 miles extra distance involved in taking the less scenic (but probably more regularly gritted) route involving the M4 did not prove too costly, and I arrived only ten minutes late for my appointment with Paul Steeples (Managing Director - Operations) and Nigel Hillyer (Technical Manager – Engineering) of Carrs Billington Agriculture. We were joined on speaker phone by Rae Tomlinson (Managing Director – Sales) from his office in Carlisle. When I visit a family-owned compounder which has operated for


generations from the same site, the history of a company is relatively straightforward to relate. This wasn’t one of those occasions, and my head was soon spinning as Rae outlined the background to Carrs Billington. The business grew out of two separate entities: Carrs Agriculture, a part of Carrs Milling Industries and latterly Carrs Group plc; and Billington Agriculture Ltd which was the legacy of the feed manufacturing activities of Criddle Billington. Carrs had taken a strategic decision to exit from the business of monogastric feed manufacture. At the time, it had a 120,000 tonne capacity mill at Silloth on the Cumbrian coast, which subsequent to this decision was left producing just 50,000 tonnes of ruminant feed. Billingtons had a mill at Kingstown, Carlisle which was also producing around 50,000 tonnes annually, again well below its capacity. It made a lot of sense for the two operations to come together, which is exactly what happened in 1999 with the formation of Carrs Billington Agriculture Ltd. Effectively, this was a manufacturing Joint Venture supplying two separate feed sales businesses. “The whole thing went incredibly successfully,” says Rae, “and overcame some key competitors in the area, the principal one being AF


PAGE 36 MARCH/APRIL 2018 FEED COMPOUNDER


plc which had mills at Preston and Penrith.” As a consequence, the Joint Venture was able to acquire AF plc, including its manufacturing assets, its sales team and branch network. The newly acquired salesforce continued as a separate entity, so now in effect three sales operations were being supplied with feed from the same underlying manufacturing organisation. Again, this worked well and ultimately led to another takeover, that of struggling Pye Bibby. Pyes had arguably overstretched itself with its 2003 acquisition of Bibbys, and Carrs Billington was subsequently able to buy it and bring it into the Joint Venture. Now further rationalisation was required to make sense of the


newly acquired assets. Silloth feed mill had already been closed down, and with the excellent manufacturing facility of the state-of-the- art ex-Pyes Lancaster mill now having been inherited, the Preston and Penrith mills were closed down along with the former Bibby mills at Blackburn, Shrewsbury and, later, Langwathby. This left the company in the position of being able to run the Joint Venture feed manufacturing operation out of its three remaining mills at Carlisle, Lancaster and Stone in Staffordshire. At the same time, further rationalisation allowed the sales organisations to come together so that, to all intents and purposes, the customer-facing part of the business became a single entity. The original Carrs Billington


Agriculture network of branches has been supplemented by those from AF plc and by subsequent acquisitions. In fact, throughout the period from 1993 to 2017, there have been 21 such businesses brought into the fold, about one each year, leading to a network of 33 branches today. In the main these have been small independent enterprises selling direct to farmers. They extend from as far north as Oban in Scotland down to Brecon in South Wales, covering much of the primary ruminant areas of the country; the aim is to target professional farmers and offer a one-stop shop supplying anything from a pair of wellington boots to a combine harvester. Seven of the branches operate as machinery franchises including such well-known names as Massey Ferguson, Fendt and Krone, with the main focus being on grassland harvesting machinery, although the most recent development at Morpeth is focussed more on the arable side. Whole goods machinery turnover is supplemented by parts and workshops, making machinery an important part of the business overall. The retail offering through the branch network covers such goods


Above: Rae Tomlinson


as animal health products, mainly proprietary products but with some Carrs Billington own-brands as well. There is significant crop packaging business, and a fair degree of pet and equine, although the main


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