UK Agricultural Finance: Your specialist agricultural lender at Royal Cornwall Show
The Royal Cornwall Show offers us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our farming heritage. Britain’s unique landscape has encouraged us to develop some of the most diverse farming breeds in the world that have adapted to complement their environment and cope with grazing and weather conditions.
Our sheep, beef and dairy farms are as much a part of the landscape as the hedgerows and trees. This is particularly clear to see across Cornwall, and the wider Southwest, where our weather means grass grows strong, allowing us to produce world-class beef, lamb and dairy products.
The key to creating this world-class produce is the people who call this land home. Those who work all hours of the day to farm and maintain our stunning landscape. Our appreciation of this heritage and the value we place on people enables us to continue offering bespoke lending to the rural community. We have lent for land and herd purchase, grant allocation, capital purchases and agricultural property development.
It is sometimes thought that UK Agricultural Finance is simply a money lending service, but what sets us apart from others is our people. Our dedicated relationship managers work closely with our borrowers and brokers to truly understand the story and the people behind each loan. This gives us the ability to consider and fund creative, innovative ideas to expand farm income that may be overlooked by other lenders who simply apply a tick-box approach to loans.
As your local relationship manager, I am proud to be based in Cornwall, and I take huge pride in seeing the people and farms we have helped thrive. From farm diversification to restructuring finance, we are here to help your farm business succeed.
Case Study: Milking robots bring new success to a family dairy
UK Agricultural Finance were approached by a family dairy partnership that has been trading for over 115 years. In the case of this dairy farm, restructuring would not only provide an improved business structure, but also bring in new productivity improvements and the use of innovative technology.
The borrowers required a loan in order to finish adapting an existing cow shed to provide a suitable area for installing milking robots and make the final changes necessary to accommodate the milking herd. This would allow them to bring the herd under one roof rather than having two herds spread across multiple locations.
UK Agricultural Finance were able to offer the borrowers a bridge loan, with 24 months of interest roll-up, to give them the breathing space they needed to have their plans embedded before starting to repay the interest come the third year of their business plan.
The introduction of the robots alone has given them data they have never benefited from before, which has helped them to further improve the management of their animals and gives them insights to help catch any potential issues in the herd early on.
Contrary to what some may think, the installation of the robots has provided them with more time to spend with their animals, leading to more hands-on time checking cows and working with dry members of the herd. The installation has even re-ignited the interest of the younger members of the family, who are impressed with the technology and modern methods of managing the business.
If you would like a conversation about expanding the potential of your farm asset, UK Agricultural Finance would be delighted to hear from you.