Farmer-owned purchasing and marketing cooperative makes key appointment

A highly-knowledgeable agriculturalist, with practical farm management experience at the highest level, has joined the AtlasFram Group as Group Business Manager, a newly-created post within the UKs largest farmer-owned farm inputs purchasing and combinable crops marketing business.

Ashley Gilman will be actively involved in helping existing AtlasFram Members to add value to their businesses and reduce their exposure to risk at a time of high market volatility, further improving the scope and level of Member benefits provided by this long-established, forward-thinking cooperative, as well as promoting the advantages of the Group to farmers, suppliers and the wider agricultural industry.

Brought up in a large farming family in the North West of England, Ashley attended Wye College from 1992 to 1995 and subsequently worked for a diverse farming business in the South East, where he gained extensive experience of the livestock, poultry and arable sectors.

Having set his sights on a career in large-scale farm management, Ashley went on to study for an MSc in Advanced Farm Management at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester and while he was there spent two weeks on a placement with Richard Williamson, Farms Director (South West) for Velcourt Group plc, Europes leading farming company. The experience opened his eyes to how a highly-professional farm management business operates and after graduating from the Royal Agricultural College in 1997 Ashley took up a full-time position with the company, having a hands-on management role on the 10,000-acre Fonthill Estate in Wiltshire, which included a 300-cow dairy unit.

In 1998, Ashley was appointed as Manager of a highly-diversified Velcourt-managed farming business in North Kent, which included 1500 acres of fruit and vegetables, together with a farm shop and pack house. When the owner sold the business in 2001 Ashley joined Maurice Crouch (Growers) Ltd in Cambridgeshire as Farms and Operations Director, with responsibility for developing and managing a highly-professional 3500-hectare farming business which employed up to 300 staff and encompassed farming operations as far afield as Cornwall and Spain. By implementing a highly-structured approach to large-scale salad and brassicas production, researching new growing techniques and developing specialist machinery to harvest and process crops directly in the field the company expanded its customer base and doubled its annual turnover to 18 million, eventually becoming one of the UKs largest salad producers.

With the needs of a new family to consider Ashley decided to take time out from the demands of working in a highly-pressured, seven-days-a-week farm management role and after a six-month break joined Anglia Farmers as Member Business Manager in May 2009, but left after 18 months while considering a return to farm management. During that time Ashley met Richard Anscombe, Chief Executive of the AtlasFram Group, who motivated him to consider returning to the cooperative sector and persuaded him to accept the position of Group Business Manager.

Looking forward to his new role, Ashley comments:

I quickly recognised just how strong the AtlasFram Group is, how well it embodies the cooperative ethos and the enormous benefits which it provides for Members in terms of adding value to their businesses. AtlasFram is purely a cooperative for farmers and landowners, it enjoys very strong commitment, delivers highly competitive prices and operates on a completely transparent basis, with 100% of rebates returned to Members. AtlasFrams area-based fixed fee structure is unique, it enables Members to budget for the cost of Membership, it protects them from paying more in Membership fees during commodity price rises and for established Members using the Group extensively, the supplier rebates returned to all Members actually pays for their annual subscription.

Having been directly involved in many sectors of the agricultural industry I have the knowledge and experience to support and advise Members, understand what they want from their cooperative and will work hard to deliver that for them. I am looking forward to the challenge and working with the team at Framlingham.

Ashley will be attending Cereals 2011 on 15^th/16^th June and is looking forward to meeting existing AtlasFram Members and farmers who are interested in finding out more about how the Group can benefit their businesses. AtlasFram will be on stand number H855.

Ashley Gilman can be contacted on 01728 727720 or email ashley.gilman@atlasfram.co.uk