AB Connect

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Changing British farming for the better

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Binding Innovation with Agriculture annual turnover in excess of £70 billion, a figure that makes it the nation’s largest manufacturing sector.

Equally, however, it is an industry facing both significant challenges and opportunities at the moment.

“By 2050, the UK is forecast to become the most populous country in Europe,” Simon Heath, Managing Director of AB Connect cites, calling upon recent forecasts. “That fact alone brings with it challenges, and getting Writer: Jonathan Dyble more from less, creating less waste and improving efficiencies across the Project Manager: Matt Selby entire value chain is the only way we can feed the population for decades to he UK’s agricultural industry is come.” flourishing.

Despite this outlook, Heath is quick According to AB Connect’s to iterate that AB Connect, a company website, agricultural land uses which has the primary purpose of approximately 70 percent of the UK’s helping farmers, producers and entire land area and produces roughly businesses throughout the UK food 60 percent of all food consumed and farming supply chain, will embrace across the country, while the national such challenges. food and drink industry maintains an Being part of AB Agri, and a leading

With British farming poised for both challenges and transformation, AB Agri’s UK animal feed business, AB Connect, is playing the lead role when it comes to taking a fresh, differentiated approach

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facilitator of process optimisation, it is backed by major parent company Associated British Foods (ABF), an active advocate of proactive investment in preparation for the future, making it stand out as a true innovator within the market.

“These challenges play to us,” Heath states. “There will be more mouths to feed so therefore a need for more food, which means the industry will need to invest to meet this demand.

But we view this as more of an opportunity than a threat. It’s a chance for us to capitalise and differentiate ourselves from the competition.”

Upholding industry transformation

Progressive is a word that best describes the company’s illustrious history.

Formed in 2012 as part of AB Agri after its Trident, KW and ABN UK divisions were merged, AB Connect has become fundamental in increasing animal performance, reducing production costs across the UK. Further, the firm recently launched its relatively new Amur business – a concept that seeks to maximise gas yields from co-products that can’t be used to feed animals.

“Amur is simply an extension of our existing skillset,” Heath reveals.

“We want to play our part in the food hierarchy, ensuring we get as much value from products as we possibly can before anything goes to landfill. This is what Amur offers.”

In essence, Amur is an anaerobic digestion (AD) business that comprises both a 3 MW plant, utilising around

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60,000 tonnes of food waste per year, and a soup plant which feeds the AD plant by keeping nutrition levels consistent and allowing the bacteria to thrive.

“We’re proud to be pioneers in by-product and co-product waste streams,” Heath affirms. “Our investment into AD and AD soups are testament to that.”

This is just one example of the

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adaptive and forward-thinking approach that has come to define AB Connect’s practices, owed to its parent company’s influence and readiness to react.

Heath continues: “Apart from investing in Amur, we are also trialling several technology platforms that will help us monitor and enhance animal performance, reduce miles travelled on our delivery fleets and increase

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production outputs whilst reducing our footprint.

“ABF encourages a long-term outlook that allows us to think about the future, where the market is going and what our customers might need, and ensures we are ready for that by empowering our investment strategies. A lot of our competitors don’t have such a luxury, let alone such an outlook.”

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Circular success

Coupled with the influence of ABF, circularity is equally a key driver of AB Connect’s success.

From AB Agri Insights and AB Vista to Speciality Nutrition and AB Connect itself, the AB Agri group is made up of a number of specialised business units that each excel in different stages of agricultural production cycles, providing a multitude of benefits through inter-connected expertise.

“There are a couple of examples that spring to mind which bring this to life,” Heath responds when asked about the circular nature of the business. “One would be how we work with our sister company Frontier. As well as being a major marketing company of arable products, part of its service portfolio helps farmers utilise technologies and offers advice to improve yields from their crops.

“We then purchase some of that grain from Frontier and again enhance its nutritional value further through our knowledge and expertise in feed manufacturing and formulations. The

AB Connect family tree

result of this is a meat supply chain that has been enhanced at every step, from field to fork.”

Calling upon a second such example, Heath again eludes to the benefits of Amur and its principles of reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill from food and drink manufacturing processes.

LEADERSHIP FOCUS SIMON HEATH, MANAGING DIRECTOR, AB CONNECT Originally from an agricultural background, with some of his family still farming in Cornwall, Heath went to agricultural college, then taking on a role as a trainee animal feeds sales specialist with AB Agri.

“That was 30 years ago! I have built my career through AB Agri and I have had various roles since finishing the trainee programme,” he reveals. “I have worked for the group in Europe, North America and China and have had numerous commercial roles.”

Such experience culminated in his appointment as the Managing Director of AB Connect in 2012.

“I have always wanted to be in agriculture, always will, but by working for AB Agri I have had the phenomenal opportunity to engage with the industry throughout the world,” Heath adds.

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He continues: “If co-products can’t be fed to animals, we can use Amur to create another value stream in terms of gas yield. Some of these products come from sister companies, and equally the by-product of AD is digestate which we put back into the land as it has plant nutrition properties.”

From helping farmers improve feed efficiency to enabling more sustainable, environmentally friendly processes and adopting better farm management practices, this circular approach is game-changing in the way of farming innovation, in which AB Connect is a vital link.

Virtuous and visionary

Such a system, however, is only able to work because of the firm’s esteemed employees – another of AB Connect’s core differentiators.

Providing the platform for its employees to excel through tailored training programmes and a number of different reward and recognition schemes, talent turnover is low and opportunities to excel are abundant.

“Staff wellbeing, personal development and retention are all key for me, as they should be for any manager,” explains Heath. “We look for passion. If we’ve got passionate,

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ambitious people who want to develop themselves and take on new challenges, then we’re the perfect environment for them.”

A member of AB Agri for over 30 years, Heath is not a lone veteran of the company. He adds: “We have a number of longstanding, dedicated colleagues who have built up their knowledge, expertise, skills and relationships with our clients over prolonged periods.

Making sure we utilise and balance that knowledge and experience with bringing new people into our business and industry is critical to us.”

What’s more, AB Connect readily supports a broad number of industry initiatives in educating young people, opening their eyes to the agricultural sector as a feasible and prosperous career path.

This includes work with the NFU (National Farmers Union) in sponsoring an industry wide training and development poultry programme,

active collaboration with trade bodies such as AIC (Agricultural Industries Confederation) and FEFAC (European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation), and sponsoring the Pig and Poultry Fair at Stoneleigh, the largest event held for the monogastric industry in the UK. “We’ve also begun to go to local schools to try and introduce youngsters to the industry, showing them what it is and ultimately what it isn’t,” Heath adds.

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LEADERS IN ORGANIC LIQUID RECYCLING SERVICES: Liquid waste management Digestate management Food waste recycling Industrial Services Septic Tank Emptying Agronomy CONTACT T 01572 767177 F 01572 767144 E info@whitesrecycling.co.uk www.whitesrecycling.co.uk

We pride ourselves on finding the best solution for our customer’s needs. We are one of the largest liquid waste management companies in the UK. With over 30 years of knowledge and experience within the liquid waste industry, we provide a first class service 24hrs a day, 365 days of the year.

Our main operation is the transportation and management of non-hazardous liquids to agricultural land as an organic nutrient fertiliser. Our dedicated, in-house agronomy team offers technical advice to farmers of the benefits of liquid waste to land. When this is not available, we seek out alternative treatment solutions on behalf of our customers We work alongside clients of waste and digestate outlets to supply a bio-fertiliser and service to our farmer clients, using some of the latest range of spreading equipment, from umbilical options through to our tractor tankers fitted with up to date GPS technology.

We can manage all types of liquid digestate.

And what it isn’t, is stagnant.

One of the UK’s and indeed the world’s fastest moving industries, owed to the rising recognition of the merits of enhanced efficiencies and transformative technologies, agriculture is poised for investment – a front that AB Connect will seek to propel moving forward.

“We strongly believe in British farming, but our industry has to grow, and it needs investment,” Heath

states. “We have some of the highest welfare and farming standards in the world and I am very proud to be a part of that, but we have to be commercially competitive with the rest of the world to ensure imports are kept as low as possible and export opportunities are maximised.

“Our role in that is to keep supply chain costs as low as possible, invest in our plants, people and infrastructure, leverage new technologies and R&D, all while trying to minimise the impact on our planet that these new demands will bring.”

Tel: +44 (0) 1733 422 161 connect@abagri.com www.ab-connect.co.uk

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AB Connect 64 Innovation Way Peterborough Business Park Lynch Wood Peterborough PE2 6FL Tel: 01733 422 161 connect@abagri.com www.ab-connect.co.uk

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