Associated British Foods plc

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Associated British Foods plc is a diversified international food, ingrediants and retail group with global sales of £6 billion and 75,000 employees. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of £7.2 billion. It operates in 46 countries with significant businesses outside Europe in Southern Africa, the US, China and Australia.

Its aim is to achieve strong, sustainable leadership positions in markets that offer potential for profitable growth. It strives to achieve this through a combination of organic growth, the acquisition of complementary businesses and achievement of high levels of operating efficiency. The group has established a track record of successful value adding acquisitions including Illovo Sugar, AB Mauri (its leading international yeast and bakery ingredients business), Littlewoods stores for Primark and the grocery brands Mazola and Ovaltine.


Contact Details


Divisions

  • British Sugar is a substantial business within ABF. It has operations in the UK, Poland, China and Southern Africa which process some 4 million tonnes of sugar annually. It is recognised as the most efficient sugar producer in Europe and has a proven ability to create value through improvement in agricultural yields, operational efficiencies, co-product development, marketing and product innovation. A number of its operations are already successful joint ventures. It has world class production facilities and technical expertise. Wissington in Norfolk is the largest and most efficient beet sugar factory in the world and is the site for the UK’s first bioethanol plant.
  • AB Agri (Associated British Agriculture) is the UK’s largest and most successful agri business supplying technology driven products, including animal feeds, and services to improve agricultural efficiency. Its products are sold worldwide and it has established a successful feed manufacturing business in China. Its KW Trident business is the UK’s market leader in the sourcing, development and marketing of food, drink and energy industry co-products. Co-product feeds are a developing part of livestock feeding and KW Trident are at the forefront of this development.
  • Frontier Agriculture is the UK's leading grain marketer and supplier of agricultural inputs. It operates from 36 sites in the UK and has a revenue of £650m. Frontier was formed in 2005, through the merger of Allied Grain and Banks Cargill Agriculture, and is owned in equal shares by ABF and Cargill. Frontier works closely with farmers to advise on crop selection and agronomy to manage for optimum yield and quality. It offers farmers a unique opportunity to grow for specific markets with contracts tailored to suit them. An understanding of the whole supply chain enables Frontier


People

Non-executive director appointed a director on 11 Oct 1999 and Chairman on 5 Dec 2002. He was a senior partner of KPMG and a member of that firm’s board until 1996.

  • George G Weston Executive director. George Weston is Chief Executive appointed April 2005.

He has been Managing Director of Westmill Foods, Allied Bakeries and George Weston Foods Ltd (Australia) he has been a member of the ABF board since 1999.

Chairman of Filtrona plc. He was non-executive chairman of Alliance UniChem plc until April 2005, having previously held the positions of chief executive and finance director since joining the group in 1985. He is a non-executive director of Bunzl plc and Anzag AG.

  • Timothy Clarke Independent non-executive director appointed a director on 3 November 2004.

He has been chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers plc since the demerger from Six Continents PLC in 2003. He joined Bass PLC in 1990 having previously been a partner of Panmure Gordon & Co.

He spent his earlier career with BP plc and latterly as chief operating officer of Centrica plc. He is a former chief executive of British Energy Group plc, a former non-executive director of The Energy Savings Trust and current chairman of GT Solar International Inc.

  • Rt. Hon. Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, OBE Senior independent non-executive director since 1994. MP from 1974 to 2001, with 15 years in Government and nine in the Cabinet in five different posts, including Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He is a director of Friends Provident plc, a non-executive member of the supervisory board of DAF Trucks N.V., and a Life Peer since 2001.

British Ambassador to France from 1996 to 2001, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 2002 to 2006, and the Prime Minister’s Personal Representative for the G8 Summits at Gleneagles and St Petersburg in 2005 and 2006. His early career included time at the World Bank in Washington and the British High Commission in New Delhi.

Biofuels

In 2006, Associated British Foods plc (“ABF”), announced that it has reached agreement with BP and DuPont on an investment to build a world-scale biofuel plant in the UK. The joint venture not only built but then operated the business. ABF and BP each hold 45% of the joint venture and DuPont hold the remaining 10%.


The plant will produce bioethanol from wheat and will be built at a cost of £200m at BP’s chemicals site at Saltend, Hull. Its capacity will be 420m litres (330,000 tonnes) of bioethanol per year and is planned to come on stream in late 2009. ABF expects a return on its investment ahead of its cost of capital in the first full year of operation.

The plant will initially produce bioethanol, but the partners will look at the feasibility of converting it to biobutanol once the technology is available. BP and DuPont intend to build a jointly funded biobutanol demonstration plant, which will run in parallel with the main plant, to support this objective.

It is expected that formal agreements will be entered into by the joint venture, after its formation, with other ABF businesses: Frontier Agriculture and AB Agri. The supply of locally grown wheat would be arranged by Frontier which is the UK’s leading grain marketer and supplier of agricultural inputs. The major co-product of bioethanol production, distillers’ grain, would be sold to AB Agri. It will use its highly specialised sales and marketing business, which sources and develops co-products from the food, drink and energy industries, to market the distillers’ grain as an alternative feed for livestock.

The announcement followed the previously announced investment by British Sugar in early 2006 to build the UK’s first bioethanol plant at Wissington, Norfolk. Its capacity will be 70m litres (55,000 tonnes) of bioethanol a year, using sugar beet as a feedstock, and the plant will start production next month.

The European Investment Bank finalised its approval for the provision of £120m of project financing for both of ABF's biofuel investments at attractive interest rates. This would be the first direct financing provided by the Bank for a biofuel project.

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