Business

Belfast animal feed firm BHH sees turnover contract

John Thompson & Sons chief executive Declan Billington with former environment minister Mark H Durkan at the signing of the prosperity agreement
John Thompson & Sons chief executive Declan Billington with former environment minister Mark H Durkan at the signing of the prosperity agreement John Thompson & Sons chief executive Declan Billington with former environment minister Mark H Durkan at the signing of the prosperity agreement

LOWERING commodity prices resulted in turnover at animal feed firm BHH Ltd contract by almost 10 per cent.

The Belfast-headquartered company, which has subsidiaries including Thompsons, reported sales of £232.6 million for the year to July 2015, down 9.7 per cent on the previous 12 months.

Profits however rose slightly to £4.7m from £4.5m.

The firm is a joint venture between Origin Enterprises, and the W&R Barnett group, one of Northern Ireland's oldest and most successful indigenous companies.

BHH, chaired by William Barnett, makes and sells animal feeding stuffs and fertilisers.

In their strategic report filed with annual accounts at Companies House in Belfast, directors said: "In a challenging agricultural environment, the group is constantly striving to maintain its position through an ongoing focus on customer service and product innovation (including participation in a number of local research and development initiatives) and a continual appraisal of production and other processes."

And they said the performance of the company was "satisfactory".

The firm employs 184 people - up 2 on the previous year. That made the overall wage bill £7.7m.

Its other subsidiaries include Independent Fertilisers and Precision Analysis.

According to separate accounts at Companies House, John Thompson & Sons - which trades as Thompsons - saw turnover fall from £234m to £213.2m over the period.

Profits after tax reached £4.15m from £3.8m the previous year.

Thompsons can trace its roots back to the 1870s and its founder John Thompson's grocery shop.

He opened his first mill in Belfast during that decade, becoming the first compounder in Ireland, but it was destroyed in the Belfast Blitz in 1941.

The business fell out of family ownership in 1963 and has operated from York Road for the past 30 years.

It now counts itself as the largest multi-species compounder in Europe.

The company makes feeds for cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs and horses.

Last year, the company announced a £2.5m investment aimed at reducing its carbon footprint by 10 per cent.

It signed an agreement with the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) that it said would accelerate research on ways to make the agri-food industry more environmentally friendly.

In return for the commitments by Thompsons to minimise its environmental footprint, the agency pledged to examine ways to reduce the bureaucratic burden on the industry.

Thompsons is due to cut CO2 emissions by 2,000 tonnes a year - the equivalent of removing approximately 350 cars a year from local roads.