THE UK’s largest farmer-owned grain business aims to increase member incomes by £20m a year.

Openfields was launched in November last year after the merger of Grainfarmers and Centaur.

Graham Lacey, group commercial director, said it aimed to increase the level of committed grain it handled by 60pc within four years.

This would bring the total amount committed to it in long-term partnerships to just over 3m tonnes a year by 2011.

Mr Lacey said over the last ten years, Grainfarmers and Centaur marketing strategies had added £6.40 a tonne to members’ grain compared to average market prices.

This had generated £13m of additional income to farmers and the intention was to add increase that to at least £20m a year.

The key was to use the best elements of Grainfarmers and Centaur to offer an excellent service, longterm partnerships, a wide range of facilities and the UK’s only national network of farmer-owned central stores.

“At the same time we are determined to drive inefficiency out of the supply chain and invest in many areas of our service,” he said. “This again would further increase members’ returns.”

Tim Davies, chief executive, said 2,000 of the 7,000 farmers the company represented had already signed up as members.

A large number of additional farmers enjoyed marketing arrangements with Openfield through groups and stores such as Velcourt, NetworkGrain UK and Crop Marketing Groups.

He said: “They have helped us create a powerful and efficient British farmer-owned business with a structure that provides security.”

The company had expected to handle 450 grain movements a day, but this now averaged 551 a day and had peaked at 823 at the end of January.

Average time loading and unloading each lorry was just over two hours.

“If we can halve turnround times, we could save £22,000 a day,” said Mr Davies.

Openfield expects to market 4.5m tonnes of grain a year from last harvest and is in the middle of a five-year contract to supply 170,000 tonnes of milling wheat a year to Warburtons.

It also has a sole supply arrangement of assured milling wheat through Camgrain to Sainsbury’s for their in-store bakery and 50pc of Coors’ malting barley a year.

The business also expects to supply 250,000 tonnes of fertiliser and process 25,000 tonnes of seed this year.