Above: The picture tells the story. In the foreground, a pickup stands ready to take some 25kg bags, while a farm trailer is loaded with a tote bag. In the background is a bulker wagon, while to the left work is being undertaken on the new car park.


possible. There are two full-time engineers employed on the site, but William has also brought in service contracts with OEM suppliers for all the major pieces of equipment, so that people can be mobilised and on-site within hours if anything should go wrong. Another early act was to persuade his old colleague Alan Benson


to join him as manager of the Aspatria mill. Like William, Alan has many years of experience and they both share a passion for health and safety and looking after their workforce. Alan was actually born in Aspatria, very close to the mill he now manages. Back at Longtown, the whole character of the site has been


changed as a result of the investment in infrastructure. What previously looked very much like a mill out of the last century now has the feel of a highly progressive technical operation. It creates the right image. “We have no divine right to demand anyone’s business,” says William. “Quality has to be a given, not a differentiator. Health and safety and how you treat your workforce and how you go about introducing modern legislation. Anybody who doesn’t go along with these changes and keeps their head in the sand in business will not survive, given the way the world is evolving.” His first 12 month period in charge has been about establishing this


way of doing business. He looked at the workforce and the various shift patterns and has added extra staff where needed, while introducing a 24/7 operation. The whole mill is controlled by DSL working alongside Adifo’s mill management software running on Microsoft AX, with their formulation package in the middle. “We were amongst the first compounders to run this combination and it is now well bedded down with us and operating across the Group,” says Andrew. “It gives us the ability to manage our offering which, with lots of bespoke blends and compounds, needs something capable of handling the complexity.” The intake pit has been upgraded in size to allow incoming


vehicles to discharge 26 tonnes within 10 minutes. Galvanised smooth walled silos supplied by Bentall Rowlands and ranging from 110 to 220 tonnes in size, offer a total raw materials storage capacity in excess of two and a half thousand tonnes. The grinder was brought in from the decommissioned SC Feeds mill, whereas brand new kit includes the Wynveen mixer, a BOA compactor over a Van Aarsen press,


PAGE 24 MARCH/APRIL 2019 FEED COMPOUNDER Sponsored by B2B Nutrition


capable of running at 17.5 tonnes per hour, with a double-deck cooler beneath. The original Jim Peet set-up was a double press line which has been retained, albeit with a new CPM press. The boiler has been replaced and the control room is also new. There are three sets of finished product bins offering 400 tonnes of finished product storage in total, above three loading lanes allowing different combinations of lorries and own-collection trailers to be loaded simultaneously. To the original Jim Peet blending shed has been added a new one, where the NWF bulk blends are made, and there is a plan to erect a canopy over the collection area outside of this to ensure customers keep dry while collecting bags and third-party products, regardless of what the Cumbrian weather is throwing at them. Although the company has not disclosed the total amount spent on


upgrading its Northern mills, it clearly runs into several million pounds. But they will not be resting on their laurels. “We have an ambitious programme to make sure we are replacing ageing pieces of kit,” says Andrew. Decisions are informed partly by gut feeling, partly by data from the control system. “We don’t wait for years until something falls apart. We want continual investment in equipment which delivers a return, taking the business forward, rather than just patching things up.” Such continual investment has several benefits. For example, in upgrading an elevator, which was doing its job fine but was actually under capacity and therefore having to work at high speed to keep up with the demands being placed on it. When this was replaced, not only was there a reduction in power used but also an improvement in quality as the handling of product was more gentle. Williams admits to being a little obsessive in keeping his mill clean


and tidy, a confession which Andrew, with a knowing smile, claims to be an understatement. But they both recognise the almost unique nature of the feed industry. Firstly, feed is their clients’ biggest expenditure and so it will always be subject to a particular focus. Secondly, customers are spending their own money. Prior to working for NWF, Andrew had spent 17 years at ABF where his customers would be ordering on behalf of their employer, and spending their employer’s money. “Farmers are spending their own money, and spending more of it on feed than on anything else. So if you rock up with something that isn’t perfect, you’re wasting your time,” says Andrew. “They’ll either take it and go elsewhere for the next order, or more likely send it back. Either way, that could create problems in a relationship with you where you are trying to engender trust. We get the order on the back of expert advice which really helps the farm to perform better – in the case of dairy either more milk, or the same amount of milk from less feed. If you turn up with feed that hasn’t been made with the thought, care and attention it deserves, then you really are trying to push water uphill.” William takes up the theme: “If a driver comes to me and says a


batch of feed looks dusty or not right in some way, it won’t go out. You are only as good as the last load which leaves the plant – and quality is a given. Everybody in the business plays a part in visual inspection of products, and if it doesn’t look right we want to be able to take remedial action here, rather than it being on a client’s farm.” The mantra is to encourage openness; not a blame culture, but learning from mistakes if they are made. Asking, ‘how collectively can we learn from this and


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