When you spend all year growing a crop, investing resources in correctly marketing your grain is a no brainer, says Pete Collins, partner at M J & S C Collins. Farming in excess of 1200ha on the Essex-Hertfordshire border, the Collins enterprise has worked with CRM AgriCommodities, since 2016. In 2019 they marketed a harvest of 6,250T of wheat, 700T of barley and 450T of soya beans using CRM AgriCommodities’ bespoke grain marketing strategy for their business.

Working with CRM AgriCommodities has directly saved time and improved business organisation and cash flow, making the most of risk management tools including insurance products like options within grain trading as part of their strategy. “Risk management tools and general market news and knowledge have helped us all to feel in control of our campaigns as well as generating above average results,” says Pete Collins.

For Pete, the results of having a completely independent strategy soon became apparent: “Our ‘de-risking’ policy prior to working with CRM AgriCommodities was to allocate 2,000T of grain to a merchant pool, however following the first year working together we reduced this to 1,000T and have since reduced this to 0T. The reason for this is the added layer of information we feel we have gained by working with CRM AgriCommodities, which has subsequently enabled us to beat the merchants pool average, by a considerable amount in many cases.”

The farming enterprise, managed by John Haynes, farm manager of seven years, also employs three further full-time employees, as well as two annual Harper Adams placement students. Alongside the bespoke marketing strategy, Pete also advocates attending CRM AgriCommodities’ grain marketing courses and conferences, to equip farmers with independent knowledge of the grain marketing tools available.