Camgrain hands marketing role to Frontier from harvest 2015

Co-op Camgrain has appointed Frontier Agriculture as its main grain marketing partner from July next year, in place of fellow co-op Openfield.

The move comes after 10 years of association with Openfield and follows a wide-ranging review of Camgrain’s grain marketing agreements, it said.

See also: Camgrain and Fengrain in war of words after takeover talks

Camgrain, based at Linton, Cambridgeshire, handles up to 500,000t of grain a year for its 500 members. It has invested more than £43m across its four sites in the past 10 years. Most recently this investment has been in advanced processing and storage capacity close to end markets to help improve logistics and to meet the increasing demands of food-grade customers.

Chairman John Latham told Farmers Weekly that member meetings would be held before the group said anything further about the reasons behind the change of marketing, distribution and strategic partner.

The group also has marketing arrangements for organic grain with merchant Robin Appel and with Gowlett Grain for oats, both of these arrangements were unaffected by the move to Frontier, said Camgrain.

In a statement Openfield said it was disappointed not to be reappointed to market grain after 10 years of successful collaboration, as it had made a significant contribution to the development and growth of the Camgrain business  

“We have been proud to support the Camgrain members in the successful development and growth of their business and we remain firmly committed to collaborative marketing which we believe maximises value return to the farmer member and delivers secure and sustainable supply routes to market in collaboration with our consumer customers.”