Grain facility hailed as ‘new chapter in collaboration’

RICHARD Lochhead, the Scottish secretary for rural affairs, yesterday carried out the official opening of the first port-side purpose-built grain handling facilities in Scotland in the past two decades.

The three-acre Montrose dock site -belonging to farming co-operative Angus Cereals – will provide members with storage facilities for more than 25,000 tonnes of feed barley, malting barley and oilseed rape and this will rise to 43,000 tonnes in the s econd phase next year.
As well as providing storage, the new facility opens up marketing opportunities for members as they will work exclusively with the established grain trader Openfield.
Openfield provides services for 15 similar businesses throughout the UK and it markets in excess of one million tonnes each year
The Angus Cereals facility is modelled on the Aberdeen Grain operation, which has an expanding facility at Whiterashes, Newmachar. Both storage businesses will work very closely together to create additional marketing leverage for a combined total of over 100,000 tonnes of high-quality grain from farmers across Central and NE Scotland.
The new facilities were welcomed by the National Farming Union of Scotland’s combinable crops committee chairman, Andrew Moir. He said the farmers behind the project had shown genuine vision.
"It not only marks a fresh take on collective co-operation between farmers but, by outsourcing the management and marketing to an established commercial partner like Openfield, it also marks a new chapter in collaboration between farmers and their merchant."
Moir added that the new facilities helped address the annual storage headache. "A lack of appropriate storage on-farm can force farmers into marketing grain at the wrong time, leaving them weak sellers in the market.
"Having the flexibility of off-farm storage in modern facilities, and marketing assistance from a professional partner, must strengthen their hand in how they approach selling their grain."

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