From farm walks to factory visits as well as pilot programmes, knowledge transfer events and milestone celebrations, 2025 was a busy year for the processors' farm liaison team.

Every year, ABP offers factory tours to its suppliers, and 2025 was no different with a series of tours at its factory sites across Ireland taking place.

These events give ABP farmer-suppliers the opportunity to see first-hand the full production process from the lairage right through to the packing area. 

Bates said: "Farmers have gotten a lot of insight from these factory tours and serve as a beneficial method of knowledge transfer beyond the farmyard."

ABP sponsors award at BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition

Last January, ABP Food Group sponsored the 'ABP Sustainable Farming Award' at the 2025 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

Luke Blackwell, a student from CBS Thurles in Co. Tipperary won with a project titled: ‘A novel approach to regenerative agriculture through the use of Comfrey as a sustainable soil enhancer’.

Farm walks

Also in January 2025, ABP supplier Brian Doran hosted a farm walk in conjunction with ABP, Teagasc and Grassland Agro.

The farm walk took place prior to the calving season kicking off.

Topics covered on the day included animal health and nutrition, GPS fertiliser spreading, and low emission slurry spreading (LESS) as well as the Advantage Beef Programme criteria.

Dairy-beef integration

Certified Irish Angus, ABP Food Group, and Bandon Co-op hosted an information event on a the dairy-beef project between the three partners focusing on dairy-beef integration.

The initiative saw ABP, Bandon Co-Op, and Certified Irish Angus join forces to launch a new venture.

The programme involves Bandon Co-Op suppliers (dairy farmers) been given Angus straws from bulls of high genetic merit and high carcass weight.

The initiative aims to support dairy farmers to produce high-quality dairy-beef calves the following spring, which than can be sold back to ABP Advantage suppliers.

The progeny from this initiative will be raised in the Bandon area of Co. Cork and finished at ABP Bandon under the Advantage Beef Programme sustainability criteria.

This project went on to pick up the Calor Best Dairy Sustainability Initiative Award at the National Dairy Awards 2025.

As well as this initiative, ABP continued its Dairy Beef Calf Pilot Programme in 2025.

The programme was initiated in 2023, when ABP supplied over 2,200 artificial insemination (AI) straws to dairy farmers across the country in an effort to create a pool of high genetic-merit beef calves for their Advantage Beef farmers.  

Spring 2024 saw over 2,200 high genetic merit beef calves move from dairy farms involved in the scheme to Advantage beef farms.

"Creating these links guarantees a good outlet for calves for the dairy farmer and ensures high quality, healthy calves for the calf to beef beef farmer," Bates explained.

The programme continued into spring 2025, with farmers who had made the connection last spring returning to deal again with each other in the spring.

New beef and dairy farmers were taken on board again and linked together by the Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison team.

ABP Monitor Farm series

ABP continued its Monitor Farm Series in 2025, where farmers receive monthly updates from the ABP Monitor Farms.

 These farms are finishing cattle in a variety of systems and are based across the country on a range of different land types.

ABP Demo Farm 10-year anniversary

In June, ABP hosted an event on the ABP Demo Farm in Co. Carlow to celebrate 10 years of research from the farm in association with the Sheppard family.

In that time, data has been collected from the over 5,500 animals that have come through the farm.

This data has helped demonstrate to farmers how a younger age of slaughter can be achieved without a negative impact on carcass weights when better quality genetics are used.

Reductions of up to 32% in carbon emissions can be seen from this research.

Bates said: "The collaboration from industry, particularly the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and Teagasc has made the farm and the research so successful.

"Most importantly, the Sheppard family and their co-operation, knowledge and expertise in calf rearing have been the cornerstone to the success of this venture."

CalfCare events

Over 150 farmers attended an Animal Health Ireland (AHI) farm walk held in Sheppards as part of the CalfCare Summer Events Series.

The evening event covered topics such as animal health, summer scour syndrome, preparing for housing, and management of calves at grass.

"We were delighted to get such a great turnout of farmers who engaged well in all topics discussed," Bates said.

Discussion groups

2025 also saw ABP and Teagasc jointly establish discussion groups in the Cahir, Waterford, and Slaney regions.

Three discussion groups have been established for three different ABP factories in partnership with the Teagasc DairyBeef500 team and the Teagasc Future Beef team.

There is now a calf-to-beef discussion group and two suckler-beef groups. These are open to all ABP suppliers.

Teagasc supply the material covered in each meeting, "which is always very useful and practical. Each meeting has been well attended and we look forward to hosting more in 2026," Bates said.

Awards

The Advantage Beef Programme was announced as the winner of 'The Green Supply Chain Transformation Award' at the 2025 renewal of the Green Transformation Awards. 

This category recognised businesses/programmes that have made a conscious effort to reduce emissions from their supply chain.

"The Advantage Beef Programme came out on top as we have seen a 10% reduction in carbon footprint from our Advantage-produced cattle as they’re on average 85 days younger at finish than the other prime cattle finished through ABP sites," the farm liaison officer explained.

These are just some of the events and achievements from the Advantage Beef Programme in 2025.

Farmers can keep up to date on the sustainability initiative in the beef section of the Agriland app and website.