Our heritage

By 1990 Trident Sugar Beet Feed is selling over 700,000 tonnes to farmers and changing suppliers attitudes to ‘waste’, securing contracts with national distillers.

ABF’s acquisition of British Sugar in ’91 created further opportunities for the ambitious team, including the 1992 purchase of merchanting business ‘KW Alternative Feeds’. The acquisition of KW provided the business with a retail route to market, additional co-product relationships and a deeper connection with the farming community.

With the announcement of a possible link between 
BSE and mad cow disease – on the 20th March 1996, domestic sales of beef products decline by 40% overnight and export markets are completely lost.

A deep understanding of our cost base and our ability to innovate enabled us to navigate this extraordinary time in our history. We led the industry in designing the Feed Assurance Scheme that made feed traceability standard in our industry and re-established trust with customers, Government and consumers.

In 1998, with many feed compounders going out of business we negotiated to purchase some of Dalgety’s feed mills. Dalgety was the UK’s no.1 feed compounder and acquiring the business further increased our UK reach.

With the emerging global commodities market impacting the price of raw materials in the UK, the group continued to look forward, investing in systems and staff to better serve arable farmers in the future.

This drive to create a business fit for the changing commercial landscape, led to the creation of Frontier Agriculture in 2005 – a ground-breaking joint venture with Cargill.

As the agricultural industry continued to consolidate, 
AB Agri strengthened associations with new and existing customers, brand owners and processors. These partners trusted in AB Agri’s products, services and proficiency in better connecting supply chains, building brand integrity and firming their relationships with farmers.

In 2009 our supply chain consultancy business, AB Sustain designed a programme that took our knowledge of farming and, together with leading academics, created an on farm carbon capture model that used data to drive new insights and efficiencies around carbon emissions on farm.

The model was adopted by Sainsburys in 2010 and now operates across 15 of their product groups. It was the first of its kind to be accredited by the Carbon Trust and led the way extracting value from farm level data.

Our businesses in the UK and China continue to advance and are reshaping once again to ensure their systems, people and structures are fit for the future. In 2014 we launched AB Neo – a start-up business within our group that focuses on baby and maternal animal nutrition. Once again, we see our people stretching the thinking, deploying science and technology to create tangible improvements in livestock production.

During our 18 years’ operating in China we had developed a portfolio of businesses to meet the needs of our customers. In 2014 we brought together the ABCA, ABNA and the B2B businesses to form one AB Agri China business and built yet another new feed mill in Zhenlai, Northern China.

In 2016 we joined forces with AgroKorn. This acquisition demonstrated our intent to bring new generation proteins to the animal feed market, and is in direct response to customers’ increasing need for high quality protein ingredients that have a strong technological component.