Current corporate and business concerns in this sector tend to focus on the uncertainty of the future, particularly the long term uncertainty of milk profitability (the South West of England has more than 33% of England’s dairy farms producing about a third of the country’s milk). This, together with increasing pressures on processors, is resulting in increasing demand for innovative business and contractual arrangements at the farmer/processor interface and an emphasis on collaboration between farmer and processor and co-operation between farmer and farmer.
At Clarke Willmott, our approach is to respond positively to facilitate this process of collaboration in its many forms which include joint ventures, co-operatives, service companies, collaborative purchase arrangements, farm restructuring, partnerships, fixed cost sharing, machinery and asset sharing, and know how pooling. This is in addition to the more traditional methods of achieving economies of scale, by way of merger and acquisition, outright sales and purchases of agriculture related business, and contracting-out of farming operations.
Particular projects in this field have included the setting up and ongoing responsibility for all legal/constitutional issues arising from joint venture agreements in the poultry and milk sectors and in the agricultural sector more generally, a management buy out and linked re-structuring of agricultural machinery suppliers, and the structuring of marketing co-operatives.
Contact: Jane Oakland
Clarke Willmott supporting Taste of the West
