Out and ABOUT By Andrew Mounsey A Visit to Wynnstay
Agriculture Carmarthen
Out & About is sponsored by B2B Nutrition, suppliers of
www.b2bnutrition.co.uk
Researching previous articles for this series has usually involved long car journeys, often necessitated overnight stays, sometimes boarding aeroplanes and ferries, crossing borders and even oceans. So it was a very pleasant change to set off just 30 minutes before I was due to meet David Hunter, mill and site manager for Wynnstay at Carmarthen, still confident in the knowledge that I had allowed myself plenty of time.
Above: Carmarthen mill and site manager, David Hunter
manufacturing businesses to the feed industry. Wynnstay has employed quite an aggressive acquisition strategy
in order to grow their business in a relatively static market and has taken over a number of smaller agricultural companies in Wales and beyond over the last 10 years and are continuing to expand down into the West Country. The group has three feed production sites, a blending plant at Rhosfawr on the Llyn peninsula in North West Wales and a pelleting facility in LLansantffraid. Of the two compound mills, the one at Llansantffraid in the north-east of Wales, is also the location for the head office. The Carmarthen mill, which is the main focus of this article, was originally owned by Dalgety’s before being sold to Welsh Feed Producers, a joint venture in which Wynnstay was involved and which it bought out in full in 2008. At the Carmarthen site, the company essentially produces three
Above: The Wynnstay mill at Carmarthen
Another difference from the norm, it quickly transpired, was the fact that David himself was a relative newcomer to the industry. More often than not, the people I interview for this column have been involved in farming and feed throughout their lives. David, by contrast, joined Wynnstay in December 2017 following a 30 year background in manufacturing, predominantly in the automotive sector but also including a couple of years in the steelworks at Port Talbot and another two years running a silo and tank manufacturer based in Llantrisant in South Wales. He was brought in to bring some of the disciplines of the automotive and other
PAGE 24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 FEED COMPOUNDER Sponsored by B2B Nutrition
main types of product. There are compound feeds for dairy, beef and sheep; there are blends, predominantly for dairy; and there is poultry mash. Blends continue to grow as a proportion of the overall product mix as feeding patterns change. The mill has storage capacity of about 3000 tonnes, and at any one time will have 2000 to 2500 tonnes of raw materials on site. David’s first year in post has not followed the typical pattern which
would be expected for a mill with a preponderance of ruminant feed production. While everyone told him that things would quieten down in the spring, we all know what actually transpired in 2018 when, with the exception of a few weeks in April, there was hardly any rain throughout the summer and the grass barely grew for three months. “It’s been tough for farmers and their suppliers. We haven’t had the relatively quiet period the industry traditionally gets between April and October. So it’s been a difficult year and it will probably be a challenging winter
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