Britain's biggest pig farmer calls on Labour to fix broken planning system
UK food giant Cranswick has called for an overhaul of planning rules to ensure 'essential' projects can be built, after the business invested record amounts last year.
Chairman Tim Smith, who has held senior roles at Tesco and one led the Food Standards Agency, warned planning delays put UK food security and resilience at risk.
Cranswick, which analysts say is now Britain's biggest pig farmer, unveiled a record capital spend of £138million for the year to 29 March as the group expanded its operations in pork, poultry and other product areas.
On Tuesday it also revealed the £32million acquisition of sausage maker Blakemans, following the £24million takeover of UK pig genetics producer JSR Genetics earlier this year.
Cranswick chair Tim Smith said the 'complexity and inefficiency' of the UK planning system is 'one of the most significant barriers to unlocking the business' full potential'.
The Yorkshire-based pork producer's expansion means it now has more than one million pigs on the ground at any one time.
Smith added: 'Excessive bureaucracy conflicted with our objective to enhance UK food security and significantly delayed important projects.
'These projects are essential prerequisites to enhancing capacity, improving food resilience, and meeting rising consumer demand.
'A more streamlined and responsive planning framework is, therefore, essential to unlocking capital investment, supporting job creation, and growing regional economies.'
It came as Cranswick achieved its strongest ever annual revenue result at more than £2.7billion, rising 4.8 per cent as strong demand from Chinese markets supercharged pork sales.
Cranswick reported an adjusted profit before tax of £198million, beating analysts' forecasts of around £192million.
Volume growth of 7.7 per cent was driven by the group's premium product range and a record Christmas trading period.
Fresh Pork export revenues rocketed 10.2 per cent, thanks to the reinstatement of its Norfolk site China licence after a four-year hiatus.
'A full range of products started being shipped to China from early January and contributed to a strong year-on-year increase in Far Eastern export revenues,' Cranswick said.
This helped contribute to a 48 basis point increase in adjusted operating margin to 7.6 per cent, which Cranswick said also reflected a 'strong contribution from growing agricultural operations, excellent capacity utilisation and tight cost control'.
Cranswick proposed to raise its final dividend by nearly 13 per cent to 76p per share.
Cranswick shares were up 2.7 per cent to 5,400p in early trading, despite suffering a sharp fall after a pig cruelty scandal was revealed by the Mail on Sunday earlier this month.
Analysts at Shore Capital said Cranswick's 'outstanding' trading statement confirmed 'a high-quality year from a top-quality business'.
They added: 'We believe that it is much more rewarding for all stakeholders when such a business operates within a context of a clear, coherent, and functional policy framework.
'Alas, none of these labels can apply to the UK Government when it comes to the British agri-food sector at present, albeit to be fair to the Labour Party elected in 2024, it has only had 10 months to deal with the atrocious mess of the prior Conservative Party.
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