Anglia Farmers Limited is a co-operative buying group owned by its member shareholders. It evolved in 2003 from the merger of Loddon Farmers Limited and Mid-Norfolk Farmers Limited and is now the UK’s largest agricultural purchasing group. As such it has considerable buying power and attracts extremely keen prices on behalf of its members for a wide range of farm inputs, services and ancillary items. It also acts as a purchasing platform for other co-operative buying groups.

Determined collaboration between farmer directors, staff, group members and suppliers has propelled Anglia Farmers to become the UK’s largest agricultural purchasing group.

This farmer-controlled co-operative business, based at Honingham Thorpe just outside Norwich, sources more than £175 million of supplies for farmers and other rural businesses. With this purchasing power it attracts considerable savings for its 1,700 full and 700 associate members.

Did you know that Anglia Farmers:

• Orders over one million litres of bulk fuel per week
• Accounts for 8% of the UK’s annual agrochemical spend
• Sources more than 30 vehicles per month
• Handles 10,000 mobile phone accounts
• Can help its farmer members to save up to £70 a hectare on input costs?

In effect, Anglia Farmers is the central purchasing department for 2400 farms, estates and associated businesses with 45 industry professionals in the buying office who are supported by 20 administrative staff handling in excess of 40,000 invoices per month.

Group statistics:

• Owned by its members with an asset base of over £1 million
• Group purchasing power of more than £175 million
• More than 1700 full members farming 380,000 hectares plus dairy/beef cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, game and horses
• Over 700 associate members from a wide range of rural businesses
• Members cover 20 counties across East Anglia and The Midlands
• Around 1700 suppliers providing agricultural inputs and ancillary items such as electricity, healthcare, building products and telecommumications
• 70 staff based at Honingham Thorpe, near Norwich
• Registered under the Industrial & Provident Act number 29539R
• The group also operates in Scotland in conjunction with the Borders Machinery Ring and Highland Business Services.

In addition to its core business, Anglia Farmers provides an administration and accounting function for The Eastern Machinery Ring and for Anglia Woodfuels.

Anglia Farmers also works with Shaping Norfolk’s Future to organise the increasingly popular Norfolk Farming Conference which takes place in February each year.

Anglia Farmers’ vision is to be the best, not just the largest, agricultural purchasing business in the UK. The facts, figures and satisfaction surveys show they are well on their way to achieving this but, sensibly, they do not intend to rest on the laurels. With the ever-challenging changes throughout agriculture, they know they cannot afford that luxury.

EFFP have completed a case study on Anglia Farmers on 'Mergers and Acquisitions in Farmer Controlled Businesses- Strategies for success' to view this report click here.