Land Business | On the money: how Strutt & Parker has helped clients obtain vital finance

Rural businesses often find that applying for grant funding can be a bureaucratic minefield. Here, we look at three projects in which Strutt & Parker has helped its clients to obtain vital finance.

The Fife farmer with cheese dreams

Since investing money from an inheritance in a buffalo herd as a novice farmer in 2004, Steve Mitchell (pictured) has established the Buffalo Farm, his own butchery and meat wholesale business near Kirkcaldy. Today, his herd numbers 130 breeding cows, he employs 24 staff and his produce is sold UK-wide, even featuring on primetime TV programmes.

Despite this success, Mitchell had always planned to add a milking herd to produce premium buffalo mozzarella. The market is potentially lucrative and, from a British supply point, largely untapped as most product is imported from Italy.

Mitchell reckoned the venture needed a seven-figure sum to fund a new herd of milking buffalo, along with buildings and equipment to make the cheese. But there was a problem: he had already borrowed a significant sum to buy property, making it more difficult to get the loans he needed. That is where Stephen Whiteford, Farming Consultant in Strutt & Parker’s Perth office, came in.

‘I made contact early last autumn to discuss Steve’s plans,’ Whiteford explains, ‘and identified the Food Processing, Marketing & Co-operation Grant Scheme [under the Scottish Rural Development Programme] as a means of providing the funding needed.’

Whiteford quickly drew up plans and submitted an application in November for 40% of the overall project cost. Word was received in April to confirm that the application was successful and the Scottish Government would be awarding £570k of funding to the project.

stephen.whiteford@struttandparker.com

The Buckinghamshire B&B with expansion plans

The Gurney family has run a thriving bed- and-breakfast and self-catering enterprise at Weatherhead Farm in Buckinghamshire since 1997. The accommodation works well alongside the traditional farm, and its location close to Milton Keynes, the Silverstone motor-racing circuit and several National Trust properties makes it ideal for businesspeople, racegoers and tourists.

In 2011, a successful application for a LEADER grant gave the business fresh impetus. That growth has continued, prompting owners Edward and Caroline Gurney to invest in converting a cattle barn into four studio apartments and a meeting room to offer conference facilities.

The Gurneys called in Christopher Hawkins, Farming & Land Management Associate in Strutt & Parker’s Oxford office, to work on the project alongside their son and Hawkins’ colleague Tom Gurney, an Assistant Land Agent.

‘Tom and I worked on a Rural Development Programme for England application for a Business Development Grant,’ explains Hawkins. ‘Our knowledge meant we could skilfully word the expression of interest and application form to present the best argument possible for the funding.’

The pair produced a detailed tender specification for local building contractors to quote to. This ensured an itemised and like-for-like costing, and demonstrated to the Rural Payments Agency that all factors had been competitively tendered for, so providing the best return for public investment. The result was a grant for roughly 35% of the total project value, and the works are now under way.

christopher.hawkins@struttandparker.com

The chicken-and-egg situation in Yorkshire

When a Yorkshire-based egg farm decided to expand, it called on Strutt & Parker to help it apply for grant funding. The farm, which produces free-range eggs, was already looking at doubling its 32,000-bird capacity.

As part of this expansion, it wanted the ability to process eggs through a newly built and equipped packing centre, where the eggs would be automatically printed and packed into trays before making their way around a conveyor to an automated robot that would stack them onto pallets, ready for collection.

However, the farm needed to raise a significant sum to finance the equipment. So Ryan Lindley, Farming Consultant in Strutt & Parker’s Northallerton office, helped it to apply for a grant through the Yorkshire Dales LEADER Programme, which was offering to provide funding to local agricultural businesses to increase productivity and support diversification.

‘It was a two-part process,’ says Lindley. ‘First, we sat down with the owners of the farm to understand their motivations and plans. We then put together an expression of interest, which laid out the project and some forecast figures. Three different quotations were required for the equipment and we finally reached a set-up costing £122,476.

‘We then submitted a full application, in which we had to forecast five years of costs, and summarise what we saw as the outcomes of the project, such as creating jobs and introducing new techniques.

‘It was a successful exercise: the application was for a 40% grant and the final sum awarded was £48,920, which meant that our clients were able to put their expansion plans into motion, and purchase and install the new equipment.’

ryan.lindley@struttandparker.com

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This article originally appeared in Strutt & Parker’s magazine Land Business Spring/Summer 2018. Read the full magazine here.