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Michael Seals MBE - Chairman
Farms 250 acres arable and South Devon pedigree herd in South Derbyshire. Director England NFSCo. Director East Midlands
Development Agency. Chairman NROSO. Past Council Member NFU and Committee Chairman.
Ian Campbell MBE - Director Intensive Sector (Pigs)
Retired Regional Manager of the National Pig Association. Director of Unitron UK Ltd.
Nigel Joice - Director Intensive Sector (Poultry)
Farms 285 acres of cereals in North Norfolk, main enterprise is 840,000 poultry unit producing meat birds for supermarkets.
Vice chair of NFU Poultry Board, member of Technical Advisory Committee to the Assured Chicken Production Scheme.
Neil Leach - Director
DEFRA Head of the Animal by–products Unit, with responsibility for advising on Government policy on animal by–products,
including the disposal of fallen stock. Responsible for developing the National Fallen Stock Scheme and a Director of NFSCo
since its creation in 2003.
Ian Duncan Millar MBE - Scottish Director
Farms a 300-acre mixed farm and a hill unit near Aberfeldy in Perthshire. Director of the Moredun Research Institute. Director
of the Highland Glen Lamb marketing group. Chairman of the Beef and Sheep Farm Assurance in Scotland until 2002.
Walter Elliott OBE - Northern Irish Director
Farms 160-acres in the less favoured area near Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone. Member of the UFU Executive. Chairman of the UFU
subsidiary company - Countryside Services. Fellow of the Royal Agriculture Society
Eifion Evans - Welsh Director
Retired practising veterinary surgeon in North West Wales. Former President of the British Veterinary Association.
The Board
Chairman’s Report
This year was another year of solid progress for NFSCo,
with some significant milestones reached. In future we
may look back on the year as being the turning point
when NFSCo evolved from being a company dedicated solely
to the business of fallen stock collection and administration,
to one where we started in earnest to diversify into other
areas, for the good of both NFSCo, collectors and our farmer
members. Our Farm Buyer joint venture with Anglia Farmer,
which offers a range of farming inputs for our members, is
evidence of that.
Our ambition for NFSCo is reflected in our new mission
statement: “We are an established Community Interest
Company focused on the agricultural industry. We utilise our
unique model to provide cost effective delivery of a wide
range of services to the farming community. Our motivated
and ambitious team consists of experts from across the
industry whose wide range of experience and skills ensure
we deliver appropriate solutions for today and develop new
opportunities to improve our industry for tomorrow.”
We believe there are many areas of agriculture that could
benefit from the NFSCo model. At the heart of it is CHOICE.
We believe it is for the farmer to choose his or her service
provider, and our model supports this through a mechanism
that injects true competition into the market, whilst also
allowing for Government support. It creates fair, transparent
and competitive pricing, and facilitates new entrants in the
sector who, through the confidential closed tendering
process, can hit the ground running.
Our quest to diversify into other areas is with just one
objective in mind - to continue to serve our membership with
new services, which provides the farmer with choice and
competition through exposing prices.
We are proud to be associated with
professional, effective and efficient
collection services for fallen stock
collection throughout the UK. We do not
believe that continually squeezing
collector’s prices to the bone is anything
other than counterproductive, as this would affect the quality
of service and ultimately drive collectors out of business, thus
reducing competition and choice.
NFSCo, remember, is a Community Interest Company so our
success is to everyone’s benefit, not just ours!
We are, therefore, well set for the future, and poised to move
forward quickly when the right opportunities arise. My thanks
go to everyone within NFSCo for making it happen in 2010,
and for positioning us so well for 2011 and beyond.
Board meetings
During the year NFSCo held four Board meetings throughout
the UK.
Liaison with Government
Throughout 2010 NFSCo continued to build on our excellent
working relationship with DEFRA officials, and the leaders of
the new Coalition Government, plus the respected devolved
Governments. Our work included:
� Writing to Jim Paice,MP, Secretary of State for DEFRA ,
stating that NFSCo was “ready and willing” to engage with
Government and was open minded to expanding the
NFSCo model into other areas;
� Writing to the Rt Hon George Osbourne, Caroline Spelman
and Jim Paice MP, with suggestions for public expenditure
savings;
� Writing a proposal document for how money could be
saved on BSE testing for Over 48 month old animals;
� Writing a proposal document to improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of Bovine TB surveillance and testing;
� Meeting with farm industry leaders, collectors, renderers
and politicians and civil servants from across the UK;
� Continuing to engage strongly on the arguments
surrounding cost and responsibility.
On the 20 October a group of DEFRA officials visited our offices
at Ashbourne for discussions on many of those issues, and to
see the NFSCo model in operation.
Liaison with Stakeholders
On 2 June NFSCo held its first collector conference at the Hotel
Miraj in Ashbourne. Some 21 collectors , plus four out of six
GB category 1 Renderers, attended. Our speakers included
Jackie Price, from The Welsh Assembly, speaking on
“Compliance with the Animal By-product legislation in Wales”;
Neil Leach on “Changes to Animal By- Product legislation” and
Ian Potter on “Sheep EID and the fallen stock sector”, and
“How NFSCo works for collectors”.
The issue of compliance with the Animal By-Product legislation,
and the fact that there are still several incidences of breaches
of the legislation that go undetected and unpunished each
year, was a particularly hotly debated subject.
After the conference several delegates visited the offices and
met the administration staff at Ian Potter Associates.
NFSCo is planning other conferences for 2011.
Payment of the Scottish Emergency fund
The winter of 2009 / 10 was particularly harsh, and many
livestock farmers lost more animals than they normally would.
In April 2010 The Scottish Government’s Rural Affairs
Secretary Richard Lochhead announced that Scotland's sheep
Stakeholder Engagement
Delegates at the Collector conference
sector would receive £200,000 in emergency aid to help
dispose of the thousands of animals that perished.
NFSCO successfully worked with the livestock industry and
Scottish Government to pay out every penny of this money. To
avoid long and expensive administration NFSCo analysed all
sheep collections for the aid period and allocated the grant to
individual farmers based on use. The eventual figure was
equivalent to a subsidy of 20%. NFSCo administered the
money either via a credit note against further collections or as
a credit directly into farmer’s bank accounts. Payments were
completed by the end of June. A total of 3,861 farmers
benefited from the money.
NFSCO is proud to have administered this money quickly,
efficiently and without the farmers having to fill out any forms.
It was a “model example” of organisations working together to
present a case for compensation, to get agreement on it
quickly from Government, and to deliver the money in a non-
bureaucratic way.
NFSCo successfully paid out the Scottish Government’s£200,000 aid package with the minimum of bureaucracy.
Operational summary
Re-tendering - GB and Northern Ireland
December 2010
In December 2010 some of GB’s biggest renderers increased
their rendering charges significantly. The main reasons cited
were because fuel and energy costs rose, and because the
value of rendering products fell.
As a result collectors in GB were asked to re-tender their fallen
stock charges early. The situation was different in Northern
Ireland, because renderers there did not increase their prices
as they did on the mainland.
Consequently new collection prices for the 2011 year applied
in GB from 1 December 2010, rather than from the beginning
of 2011, with the NI tariff coming into effect on 1 February
2011.
The tendering process in both cases was conducted on time,
and efficiently, and undoubtedly helped to mitigate price rises.
Some collection prices in certain areas decreased by more
than 20%, for example. This was despite some renderers and
collectors striving for 30% price increases.
NFSCo diversifies to reduce administration costs
Thanks to NFSCo’s unique business model, the skills of the staff
at Ian Potter Associates, and the investment in IT at the
Ashbourne offices, NFSCo is well placed to diversify into other
business areas.
Throughout 2010 various seeds were sown on a variety of
fronts, and one plan came to fruit in November, when NFSCo
formally launched Farm Buyer - a buying group scheme in
conjunction with Anglia Farmers Ltd, the leading agricultural
purchasing co-operative in the UK.
NFSCo members have the opportunity to save money on a
wide range of goods, while NFSCo profits by spreading its
overheads and costs over a wider range of products, goods
and services.
Being a non profit making organisation NFSCo will then use
that added income and profits to reduce the administrative
costs of fallen stock collection. The scheme started by offering
discount on many commonly purchased consumables, with
the objective to introduce fuel, fertiliser and other farm
supplies and requisites in 2011.
Operational Summary
NFSCo collectors get thumbs up from farmers
Collectors continued to maintain extremely high standards of
collections throughout the year. These were monitored on a
monthly basis via NFSCo’s quality-control programme. Over
the course of the year farmers were invited to fill in an online
or postal survey form, questioning them on the efficiency with
which their collector dealt with their collection. Over 5000
questionnaires were returned, with the results stating that
farmers were happy with 97% of collections. The very few
problems that arose were dealt with quickly and efficiently by
either the collectors concerned, or NFSCo’s office staff.
As an incentive to fill in the questionnaires NFSCo offered four
£100 prize draw incentives, allocated regionally.
In order to thank collectors for their high standards of service
NFSco took out advertisements in the main farming press in
May (see opposite).
During the year, and after 3,000 survey responses had beencompleted, NFSCo thanked collectors for their high standardsvia an advert in the key farming press. Eventually over 5,000survey forms were returned.
Compliance
In order to improve member’s compliance position,
traceability and record keeping, November 2010 saw NFSCo
issue new membership certificates, with the annual
compliance statement following shortly after.
The compliance statement enables a farmer to show any
compliance inspector an up-to-date record of all fallen stock
collections made via NFSCo through the year.
A small administration fee of £4.65 + VAT was charged to
cover the report generation and printing of the statement.
Financial Update
David Lovatt, a partner at Brassingtons
in Staffordshire, says that NFSCo’s
guaranteed payment system is
“invaluable” to his business, and
estimates that he would have to employ
another person in the office to deal with
the 400 to 500 invoices a month that are
currently being dealt with by NFSCo.
“There are bad payers in every industry
and farming is no different. Being paid
on time and not having to worry about
so many late payers or bad debts is
worth a lot of money to our business.”
Around three quarters of the firm's
client base use NFSCo. He’d like more
farmers on it because of the ease of
paperwork and the single payment from
NFSCo, but he accepts that encouraging
farmers to switch-over won't be easy.
He has always supported the principles
of NFSCo, and believes that the fallen
stock collection industry is much more
professional now than it ever has been,
and credits NFSCo with contributing to
this. “Collectors and the industry as a
whole have moved on significantly since
BSE. NFSCo has raised the bar in terms of
rules and regulations, and we've got
much better in terms of our operation
and service with quicker pickups, more
professional with our sealed vehicles
and their drop trays and our much
improved biosecurity, and also more
skilled and valued through the general
services we offer like TSE sampling.
Collectors should provide a service that
is fitting to the 21st century, and I think
most of us are doing that.”
Financial update
NFSCo is a Community Interest Company, with the profits
reinvested in the business to reduce the administrative cost of
fallen stock.
Turnover for 2010 was up again on 2009, as a result of a steady
increase in membership . Thanks to the efforts of Ian Potter’s
administrative staff our bad debts are again down, and remain
low.
All in all, therefore, NFSCo’s financial position can be described
as being solid, and this provides us with a perfect platform for
our efforts to diversify into new areas and increase our
turnover accordingly.
Any member who wishes to see a set of detailed accounts
should request them in writing from our registered office:
c/o Saffery Champness,
Stuart House,
City Road,
Peterborough,
PE1 1QF
David Lovatt, Brassingtons.
What a collector says about NFSCo’s payment terms . . .