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Matt is sixth generation of family to head Dugdale Nutrition

It is not often that someone goes into work with several generations of his family looking on, but that is exactly what will be happening as Matthew Dugdale becomes the sixth generation of his family to take over the helm of Clitheroe based feed compounder, Dugdale Nutrition.
Fortunately for him the family are in the photographs in reception at the mill, but he still feels his predecessors are saying “Good luck, but don’t mess things up!”.
Aged 32, Matt takes over as managing director from long serving Dugdale employee, Howard Blackburn, but adds that as he settles into his new role that he will still be tapping into Howard’s lifetime experience working with the company.
The sense of heritage and succession remains strong within the company being brought home to Matt every time he drives to and from work past Waddington Post Office where the family feed business was started by John Dugdale in 1850.
Matt is married to his wife, Sarah-Jane. They have a 20-month-old son, Ben.
“We were a family of shopkeepers rather than farmers or feed merchants with John Dugdale starting to sell a few bags of corn to dairy farmers bringing their milk into Clitheroe along with other goods. Today we have a mill producing around 100,000 tonnes of ruminant animal feeds each year, with growth almost entirely driven from within the company.
“Any feed company can sell a bag of feed and send an invoice. What the farmer has always wanted is a feed supplier that becomes an integral part of his or her business giving sound, unbiased, advice and working alongside the farm team. This is where I believe a family run company has the edge over larger companies in having a more direct management structure and being able to react more quickly to customer needs.
“It also means that when things go wrong, as happens in every business, our customers can talk directly to the boss and the boss will go out to the farm and sort things out,” said Matt.
Brought up in the Ribble Valley, Matt studied agriculture at Nottingham University specialising in dairy cow nutrition. This, he recalls, included 5.00am milkings and spending much of his time smelling of cows and silage!
He returned home 10 years ago working his way through virtually every job in the mill starting on the night shift and brushing the mill floor. His moved on to on-farm sales and working as a ruminant specialist serving customers mainly in the Ribble Valley area.
Away from work he played rugby for many years and was captain of Clitheroe Rugby Club going on to play village cricket over the summer period. His spare time is now severely limited while he studies for a MBA (Master of Business Administration) at Lancaster University Management School.
Dugdale Nutrition’s retiring managing director, Howard Blackburn joined the business as a dispatch clerk in 1967 taking on a succession of roles, mainly in sales and marketing, and taking over as only the second non-family managing director in 2001.
Married to Janet and with two grown up children, he is looking forward to spending more time walking and working through a list of do-it-yourself jobs. Howard also looks forward to spending more time on his charity work with Rotary and other organisations.
How has Dugdale Nutrition managed to develop and expand during a period when many small and medium sized feed compounders have been taken over or, worse still, gone out of business? This has also been achieved at a time when falling milk prices have put severe pressure on dairy farmers with many leaving the industry.
Howard said: “Probably one of the things that helped secure the future of the business was the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic. We lost 60 per cent of our business in just six weeks. In addition our mill site was still registered as part of an agricultural holding so was simply closed down for a period as a contiguous holding.
“This forced us to focus on and re-evaluate our whole business which placed us in a strong position for the future. In addition the business has been built almost entirely on its own success and not on the acquisition of other businesses. Many of the businesses that failed had undergone rapid expansion through acquisition of other businesses which left them vulnerable when the farming industry hit problems.
“We also recognised that our feed represents only about 50 per cent of the total dry matter fed to cows, the remainder being outside our control. Our M3 system – Management for More than Milk – was developed to deal with this and has proved a major success.”
Matt added: “Our aim is to give the highly professional service required by modern farmers, but also to build long term relationships with our customers. Most farm businesses remain as family businesses and it helps that we are also a family business. Many of our staff come from farming families so understand the needs and problems of farmers.
“We are competing with large national feed suppliers, most of which do an excellent job. As a relatively small independent family business we have the major advantage of adaptability. For instance we can take a specialist order in the morning, formulate it and deliver it in the same day. We can also guarantee that every ingredient in our feeds is a working ingredient and do not come under pressure to bulk out a ration to generate greater profits for shareholders.”
And the future? Matt and Howard say that one of the keys to securing the future of Dugdale Nutrition is planning for succession and the need for a blend of youth and experience. Of the 48 current employees, 14 have been with the company for over 20 years and 13 are under 40 years of age. It was just this policy that took Howard from dispatch clerk to managing director and now sees him handing over to the next generation as Matt takes over the helm at Dugdale Nutrition.