Pounds from your piggery
Tue 25 Jan 2022
Shouler & Son is turning its attention to the plight of the pig farming industry in building on the property firm’s 'Cash in your cowshed' initiative which saw it working with farming clients to successfully bring forward buildings and land holdings for alternative business use.
The squeeze on the profitability of pig farming made national news headlines at the end of last year (2021), but the pressures on the sector have not gone away this year.
Indeed, the National Pig Association - the voice of the British Pig Industry - has a pig industry in crisis campaign blog. The blog posts so far this year are only serving to reinforce the parlous situation faced by many pig farming operations.
Shouler & Son is urging operators in the sector to come forward to explore the viability of the redevelopment of units and associated land for business premises for alternative business uses.
The firm’s commercial property experts are acutely aware of the lack of supply of business units in the rural East Midlands when set against demand from commercial occupiers and property investors in the region.
This, in turn, is set against the wider, national backdrop of ongoing demand for industrial units which has characterised the commercial property sector for most of the past decade.
And the professional view is that the Covid-19 pandemic has only served to shore-up this trend for the foreseeable future.
Shouler & Son has worked on a number of schemes - around Melton Mowbray, most recently - which have seen redundant farm buildings redeveloped for mainstream commercial premises use.
The move away from food production when it comes to future farm payments and subsidies will also be giving many farm operators - not just those in the pig industry - pause for thought this year about the future direction of their business.
Redevelopment of buildings and land holdings for alternative business uses gives one such option.
For more information on commercial land opportunities, contact Helen Vesper-Smith at Shouler & Son, tel 01664 560181, hvs@shoulers.co.uk.
helenvs@shoulers.co.uk