THE UK’s largest farmerowned grain business aims to increase member incomes by £20m a year.

Openfields, which has a base at Wetherby, was launched in November after the merger of Grainfarmers and Centaur.

Graham Lacey, group commercial director, said it wants to increase the level of committed grain it handles by 60 per cent – to just over three million tonnes a year by 2011.

Over the past ten years, Grainfarmers and Centaur marketing strategies had added £6.40 a tonne to members’ grain compared to average market prices. This had generated £13m of additional income to farmers and the intention was to increase that to at least £20m a year.

Tim Davies, chief executive, said 2,000 of the 7,000 farmers the company represents have signed up as members. A large number of other farmers have marketing arrangements with Openfield through groups and stores such as Velcourt, NetworkGrain UK and Crop Marketing Groups.

He said: “They have helped us create a powerful and efficient British farmer-owned business with a structure that provides security.”

The company had expected to handle 450 grain movements a day – it now averaged 551 a day and peaked at 823 at the end of January.