Dalgety to close southern mills

23 July 1998

Dalgety to close southern mills

By Peter Grimshaw

DALGETY is to close its compound feed mills at Avonmouth, Bristol and Poole, Dorset – resulting in 120 job losses.

Remaining production will be centred on the companys smaller mills at Calne, Wiltshire; Cullompton, Devon; and Lifton, Devon/Cornwall border.

The companys feed business in the south-east will be transferred to the farmer-owned business SCATS, in a deal that will include redeployment of the Dalgety south-east sales team to the co-operative.

Supplies for this region, which includes Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, will be manufactured at SCATS Micheldever, Hampshire and Robertsbridge, East Sussex mills.

Dalgety says some 120 jobs will be lost at Avonmouth and Poole. The companys Avonmouth feed laboratory will be relocated locally, and its Denkavit business, also based at Poole will be unaffected.

Arable merchanting and crop-marketing interests will continue as before, and letters are going out today (Thursday) to all feed and arable customers in the south to explain the closures.

The two mill shut-downs alone will take 290,000 tonnes/year capacity out of the UK feed industry, and clearly reflect the depressed state of livestock production. The company has not ruled out further closures.

Dalgety directors bought the companys core business in a Nat-West Group funded management buy-out, worth £50 million, last May.