focus remains on the professional farmer. There has been investment into the branches over recent years, including a new one at Annan in South West Scotland costing the better part of £2.5 million and a major extension to the Morpeth facility costing more than £1 million. Throughout the network, there are now branches with modern facilities including a retail shop, warehouse and workshop where appropriate, with well-trained staff including an SQP to advise on animal health products and BASIS qualified personnel to talk about agrochemicals. Most of the branches are located adjacent to an auction mart such as Skipton, Jedburgh and Carlisle. During the early 2000s, the company also invested in the oil


business, with the acquisition of Cumbrian-based Wallace Oils. In effect, this was two businesses, with one operating very successfully in Cumbria, and another in South-West Scotland being under pressure due to strong competition in Dumfries & Galloway from Johnston Fuels. “So we acquired Johnston Fuels and consolidated,” says Rae. These businesses have now been developed into Carrs Billington Fuels, covering the whole territory and supported with investment in vehicles and branches. It now supplies 125 million litres of oil annually, targeting mainly professional farmers and rural dwellers. But the biggest part of the company remains its feeds business,


contributing around a half of the overall turnover of £260 million. Total tonnage last year was 570,000 tonnes of which 410,000 was compounds and 160,000 tonnes was blends. The largest mill is Lancaster, which has four press lines and produces a quarter of a million tonnes of feed in total annually. Included in this total are meal products (a simple blend produced in the compound mill, which is ground but not pelleted); because of the impact on overall efficiency of the mill, production of meal is restricted to a relatively small tonnage (12,000 tonnes) and an alternative nearby site for production is being sought. In addition, Lancaster has a bin-based coarse mix production facility, commissioned in 2012 and now turning out 25,000 tonnes, up from 8000 five years ago. Lancaster is also the place where the company produces its AminoMax products, rumen-protected rape and soya meals. The patented process mixes sugars and proteins together at high temperatures over an extended period of time to create a controlled Maillard reaction. The product, which offers consistent levels of available lysine, methionine and other essential amino acids, is used in the company’s rations as well as being sold direct to farmers and to other compounders, but only outside of Carrs Billingtons’ trading area. The Carlisle mill produces 110,000 tonnes of compounds annually


while Stone’s output amounts to 135,000 tonnes. Both mills oversell their capacity at the height of the season between January and April, especially when sheep feed comes on. The overspill is put into to Lancaster which supplies Carlisle customers direct at this time, while within the southern area feed produced from Lancaster when required is bunkered at the Welsh blends sites for distribution from there. In this


Right: Nigel Hillyer pictured in front of the Wynveen high speed paddle mixer


FEED COMPOUNDER MARCH/APRIL 2018 PAGE 37


way, the two compound mills in the north and the south are operating at optimal efficiency, at their capacity in the height of the season, while Lancaster’s larger capacity is utilised to ensure farmer customers receive their orders in the prompt manner they are accustomed to (which means, as Paul ruefully explains, “two days’ notice at best, and tomorrow when they forget!”) Carrs Billington has seven different blending plants, all in very


different geographies across the North West, Midlands and in Wales. Some of these plants are focussed on dairy blends, others on beef and sheep. Some use considerable volumes of pellets, while others use virtually none. Some produce mainly mealy blends while others can sieve to create ‘clean’ blends and some produce a high value molassed coarse mix including flakes. Over the years since blends started to come to the fore following the introduction of milk quotas in 1984, the boundaries have become blurred with a complete spectrum now being made from ground blends through simple ingredient mixes to sieved nutty blends, molassed or unmolassed – the options are limitless. The other trend has been for increasing customisation. In the


dairy-focussed blends sites, everything is made to order almost exclusively in bulk, greatly reducing the need to make compound specials in the mills. While beef and sheep blends do lend themselves to greater standardisation, there are still hundreds of customer own mixes. Across all the blend plants there are 1200 live formulas. The complexity arises from the need to balance the nutritional needs of the animals with the other feeds available on the farm. Forage varies so much from farm to farm and year to year while farm feeding systems and animal breeds and genetics play a huge part. Throw in what the customer is willing to pay as well as individual whims and perceptions, and it starts to become clear why there is the need to be able to produce this massive range of blended products. Experienced nutritionists use NutriOpt from Trouw Nutrition as a tool in developing their advice for farmer customers. Somebody has been crunching some numbers at Carrs Billington.


Either that or they have been diligently reading their Feed Compounder, because they were able to tell me that ruminant compound feed production in Great Britain has been fairly static over the last 20 years at around 3.5 to 4 million tonnes, depending on issues such as milk


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