Leading animal feed manufacturers, Harbro, has reported a slight fall in turnover and profits for the financial year to June, 2019.

The Aberdeenshire-based company’s turnover saw a reduction of £0.5m over the previous year to £118.5m and international sales also reduced by £150,000 to £2.9m – mainly as a result of the Brexit uncertainty, it said.

That meant that pre-tax profits decreased from £3.6m to 1.7m, with retained profit standing at £0.9m. The group EBITDA (before tax etc) figure was £5.7m, while staff numbers increased to 521 from 479, due to expansion across a number of areas of the business.

Managing director, Chris Baxter, said: “It has been a challenging period for both the industry and the Harbro Group. The winter of 2018/2019 was extremely mild and the UK market experienced reduced feed volumes, making it difficult to recover increased raw material costs that faced the group.

“During the financial period, the group continued to invest in the future of the business with further investment in its feed mills and mobile mill fleet, which contributed to a reduction in gross profit while assets became fully utilised.”

Its retail division continued to perform well and was further strengthened by the acquisition of a business in central Scotland, which takes the network to 21 stores serving both the agricultural and wider rural communities.

Harbro CFO, Ross Baxter, commented: “Despite challenges, Harbro remained a robust and diverse business which is continuing to invest in improving processes in an effort to allow the business to become leaner, more efficient and allow better control of overheads. We are well positioned for the future.” He added that the current Covid-19 pandemic would be challenging for the industry.

Chris Baxter said: “We remain confident in our strategy and vision for the business which is focused on environmental sustainability, quality technical advice and improving animal health and performance for our customers. We will also further strengthen our pig and poultry business in the next 12 months, to increase market share.”

Despite the challenges facing many sectors of the market, Mr Baxter stressed that the business was leading the way in a number key areas, such as environmental pressures and carbon foot-printing on ‘farm to supply chain’ changes in the red meat sector.

It was achieving this by providing quality technical advice and Carbon Trust approved products, like Rumitech, to reduce methane emissions and improve feed conversion, along with formulation packages and on farm monitoring tools, developed to improve performance on-farm. This work has recently been acknowledged by politicians in both Westminster and Holyrood.