In March a client came to us with a problem. A supplier had been unable to put together the 15,000 tonnes of maize needed for the 2024 season at the contracted price.

It was a difficult situation – the contractor was local and would have talked to many of the local growers and the target contracted price was too low for the current market.

So the challenge was to locate growers with land within 15 miles that could supply the target tonnage; at a higher price than the contract – but sufficiently lower that it made commercial sense to go with this one-off alternative over paying the higher price proposed by the contractor. It was March – drilling is anytime from mid-April – we had 6-8 weeks.

We got our team on to speaking to local contacts and some of the bigger national brands to see if they could help of point us in the right direction.

In two weeks we had a list of over 40 contacts – from who, we needed to find 1,000 acres of land a few would be prepared to put into maize.

Another two weeks and we had secured 10,000 tonnes worth of acreage from a mix of estates and small farmers.

We created a new, easy-to-use, short form feedstock contract that was easily explained, understood and able to be signed up to quickly and we put it into docusign (probably the most difficult part of the process was encouraging the farmers to use this form of digital signing process).

Finally, after 8 weeks, we had enough acreage, signed up to via the digital signing process, on standard terms – ready for drilling. Of course, we needn’t have hurried as the weather this year meant most didn’t drill until the end of May – but the client was able to rest easy that at least everything was put back together and went in…

… and it cost the client £300,000 less than they had been told it would.

If you’re interested in how Forager’s expert team can help you – please contact us