Buitelaar Group

TALKING ABOUT REGENE R ATION

This year, Buitelaar Group is celebrating its centenary. Under the Buitelaar name, the business has in recent years, developed into a provider of sustainable, higher welfare beef supply chain solutions. CEO Adam Buitelaar related the broad portfolio of group products and his plans to regenerate the farming industry in conversation with Phil Nicholls.

Soil

erosion and desertification pose genuine threats to world food supplies in the foreseeable future. Buitelaar Group CEO Adam Buitelaar shares these concerns: “We’ve only got 60 harvests left before the world totally runs out of food.”

Buitelaar Group is working towards solving the impending crisis with a blend of regenerative agriculture and a renewed economic model for the farming industry.

The story of Buitelaar Group began in 1922 outside Amsterdam and has been managed by five generations of the Buitelaar family. The current incarnation of the company began in 2001 when Adam Buitelaar took over the role of CEO. Buitelaar Group has always been involved in buying and selling cattle, but today’s company evolved from the drive to add value into the livestock business.

Buitelaar Group is the largest integrated beef supply chain in the UK, collecting between 800-1,500 quality calves each week.

“One of the biggest milestones for me,” Mr Buitelaar explained, “was the point when I realised that we’re not a company that buys and sells cattle, we are actually a sophisticated supply chain.”

The sustainable chain uses four higher-welfare collection cen tres strategically located in UK dairy farming areas that provide additional services such as extensive health monitoring and full traceability throughout the supply chain.

At the start of the century, Buitelaar Group was devoted to the distribution of live animals, but quickly diversified into the supply

of meat. Customers include Morrisons and McDonalds, with the group offering a range of award-winning beef products. Buitelaar Select Beef won the AHDB Gold Award for England’s Best Steak, benefitting from a uniform feeding plan across the chain and a fully traceable supply chain.

At the forefront of the Buitelaar Group beef range is the dedicated Heritage Hallmark brand featuring beef from a range of traditional breeds, whilst Aberdeen Angus By Buitelaar and Rosé Veal main tain their own identity within the house of brands. Irish beef is another Buitelaar Group speciality with a supplemental line dedi cated to the Mount Leinster brand.

The diverse portfolio of products and services at Buitelaar Group extends to using all the animal. The group supplies 1,000 tonnes per week of premium raw materials to the pet food industry.

This same philosophy extends to animal hides, with markets in China, India, North Africa, Europe and Mexico. Beyond the cattle hides, Buitelaar Group sells about 3.5 million sheep skins annually.

The Health and Nutrition division of Buitelaar Group oversees development of products to help the group rear over 40,000 calves every year. This range of milk powders, high-health calf housing units and antibiotic-free calf health products were developed for the group’s supply chain. These are all now offered to indepen dent farmers.

A caring family

Thanks to its dedication to quality and a diverse portfolio, Buitelaar Group has a turnover of £150 million with a team of 80 employees, over 60% of whom are women. Buitelaar Group operates in 13 sites scattered across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. Such a diverse geographic spread could have made Brexit a challenge:

“Instead of seeing a problem, ‘I ask, how can we cope with that?’” s aid Mr Buitelaar. “It’s a case of asking ‘How can we turn this into a positive and use it to our advantage?’ We’ve all been aware Brexit was coming for a long time; we’ve all had time to find solutions. We’ve coped and we have grown from it.”

The small team allows for a caring family culture at Buitelaar Group. “I don’t feel we have anyone working for us,” Mr Buitelaar explained. “When you’re the football team captain, you don’t have players working for you, they’re working with you to achieve a common goal. That’s how I see it.”

As part of the celebrations to commemorate its centenary and family culture, the management team toured each Buitelaar Group location, presenting a group update to include a surprise increase in holidays and pension. Additionally, each month the team comes together via Microsoft Teams for the Golden Giveaway, a ‘Spin the Wheel’ style competition with a weekend away up for grabs for one lucky team member.

Due to Covid precautions, 2022’s planned centenary parties at the Buitelaar Headquarters in Kildare were postponed until next year, leaving more celebrations for the Buitelaar team to look forward to.

Regenerative agriculture

Alongside caring for the workforce, Mr Buitelaar has a vision to regenerate the broader farming model.

“When we talk about sustainability on a farming level, the first thing that has to be sustainable is the family farm. At the end of the day, if the family farm can’t make money and can’t generate money for the next generation, then that farm will disappear.”

The family farm must be a viable economic model. The Buitelaar Technical Team undertake trials, collaborative research and new product development to assist farmers through the current and future challenges. The group’s passion for livestock welfare received recognition with The Good Calf Award in 2019 from Compassion in World“Historically,Farming.

farmers have sold commodity, not product. In my opinion, they need to think differently and focus on marketing quality produce off farm,” Mr Buitelaar continued. “Producing regeneratively farmed foods, focusing on the way the animals are

g razed and the positive environmental impact will give the family farm an improved return.”

Central to this new farming model are the regenerative agriculture principles, which include improving soil fertility, biodiversity, water retention and cleanliness and carbon sequestration. Working handin-hand with nature, regenerative agriculture is an umbrella term for a loose package of sustainable agriculture techniques.

Concerns about the future global supply of food – summed up by Mr Buitelaar’s “60 harvests left” statement at the top of this article – make the drive to embrace regenerative agriculture more urgent.

Development Farm

Buitelaar Group’s innovative model to invest in and develop the livestock industry is based around the Long Lane Development Farm. Acquired in 2019, this state-of-the-art facility offers the group vast opportunities for substantial education, on-farm trials and research and development. The farm also serves as a demon stration of best practise for farmers.

Mr Buitelaar highlighted an example of the work at Long Lane Development Farm: “With soy plantations driving deforestation in the rainforests, clearly, it’s right to cut soya from our animals’ diets.

Buitelaar Group CEO Adam Buitelaar with his son Franz Buitelaar

During commercial scale trials, we tested local feed alternatives and found English linseed to offer comparable nutritional value. Many of our trials are driven by environmental considerations.”

Uniquely, Long Lane is considered one of the only controlled platforms for R&D that runs concurrently as a working farm. “We wanted to implement the best of academia onto the farm and ensure trial results are practically viable. As a company, we can then showcase successful outcomes.”

The Development Farm’s success influenced the purchase of a further two farms to support the regenerative future of the supply chain. These new locations in Ireland and near Chester in England will allow the group to reach more farmers.

Mr Buitelaar added: “We’re invested in demonstrating how farmers can produce award-winning beef that makes positive environmental

impact, whilst benefitting from lower impact farming methods, both physically and financially.”

The evolution of Buitelaar Group continues as it pursues the regen erative agriculture model.

“We want to feed cattle regeneratively and work harmoniously with nature,” concluded Mr Buitelaar. “The old cliché ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’, derives from consuming a healthy, nutritious diet; in our modern world, I think we need to remember the value in our farm produce.

“A well marketed, nutrient-dense product, which plays an active role in sequestering carbon, will both enable premiums to be fed back to the family farm and support our planet’s regeneration.

“We’re only on this earth once, and I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and be proud of what we have achieved.” n