Grassland Agro accounts for 2022 and 2023 showed the fertiliser company suffered a significant reversal in fortune last year, reporting an operating loss of €2.66m, down from an operating profit of €9.18m in 2022.

The long-awaited accounts for both 2022 and 2023 were published this week, less than a fortnight after Grassland Agro announced that veteran CEO Liam Woulfe would retire from his position at the end of the year.

The period covered by the accounts include the huge volatility in global fertiliser prices, and that is reflected in the sales figures which were up €94m in 2022 to €214m, and then down €87m to €127m in 2023.

The accounts show that Grassland Agro saw significant costs from the volatility, with stocks at the end of 2022 written down by €11.5m.

There was another write down of €4.25m for 2023. These numbers are treated as an operating expense for the company, meaning a €15.75m hit to its bottom line across the two years for fertiliser it paid high prices for.

The company paid the entirety of its 2022 profit after tax of €7.6m as a dividend to shareholders in 2023, and paid 2021’s profit after tax of €5.7m as a dividend in 2022.

Subsidiary

Shares of Grassland Agro are 80% owned by Timac Agro Ltd – a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French Roullier group – and 20% owned by Freshgrass Unlimited, wholly owned by Liam Woulfe, implying a payment of €10.64m to Roullier and €2.66m to Woulfe across the two years.

The company started 2023 with loans of €42.3m from Group Roullier charged at 5% interest, and despites reducing that balance by €17m to €25m during the year, it was hit with interest payments of €2.2m in 2023.