Flahavan’s is taking a “bolder” approach when it comes to meeting the strong demand for organic oats as it seeks new growers.
James Flahavan, manager at Flahavan’s, made the comments as he addressed BioFarm 2024, Ireland’s biological farming conference, in Co. Limerick yesterday (Tuesday, November 5).
The family owned business has been operating in Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford for over 200 years, milling both conventional and organic oats.
Organic oats
The conference heard the organic part of Flahavan’s business has recorded a significant increase in growth in recent times, when compared to conventional oats.
“If you look at the balance between the two over the last number of years, the real sector growth has been the organic side for us compared to conventional piece.
“It grew from about 20% of our business being organic to now where it’s probably about 45% of the volume that goes through the mill.
“That’s a real testament to the demand that’s out there for organic oats and for the products,” he said.
Between 2014-2016 Flahavan’s was taking in 2,500-3,000t of organic oats from the Irish market annually.
From 2017 onwards, James Flahavan said the company made a “concerted effort” to bring more organic growers on board to match its requirements.
He said that by 2020 and 2021 the company had an annual intake of close to 9,000t of organic oats from Irish growers.
“We recruited more growers, more people came into the panel and they were very good years in terms of output and yield,” he said.
Demand
However, Flahavan said that the company was “probably a little bit conservative at the time” in terms of demand forecasting.
“We didn’t want to sell growers on a false promise of demand as well into the future.To a certain extent, that’s kind of shot us in the foot, because we weren’t bold enough in our ambitions for what the demand was going to be.
“We’re in a situation where since 2021 our demand has only grown. We’ve grown about 40-45% in terms of demand for organic oats and our supply has actually fallen and there’s a number of different factors as to why that has happened.
“If we look at the last two years, our supply from the Irish growers has only dropped to about 6,000t/year, or maybe just over that. So there’s a significant gap between where we want it to be and where it is at the moment,” he said.
“The message here today is that there is a big opportunity here for anyone who wants to get into into organic tillage and organic oats growing in particular.
“We have an ambition to broaden our panel of growers to meet the demand that’s out there,” Flahavan added.
The conference heard that there is “really strong demand” for Irish organic oats coming from across the UK.
Flahavan’s currently holds 50% of the market for organic oats in the UK and is the number one brand there.
“We’re putting a bolder foot forward this time around to say that there is that demand and we’re looking for the supply to to meet that,” he said.
Flahavan’s will be holding an information event in Horse and Jockey, Co. Tipperary on November 19 for new and existing organic oat growers.