British Business Bank CEO Louis Taylor visits Shropshire-based Cherrington Farm with Chester-based Oxbury Bank

Press release 18 July 2024

British Business Bank CEO Louis Taylor visited Shropshire-based Cherrington Farm to see first-hand the difference the Bank’s funding is making in the agricultural sector.

He visited the farm along with senior figures from Chester-based Oxbury Bank and members of the British Business Bank’s Guarantee and Wholesale Solutions team.

Oxbury is a UK bank with a singular focus on farmers, food production and the rural economy. It recently secured a second transaction under the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee.

Run by Andrew Crow and the Crow family, Cherrington Farm is a mixed arable & beef farming business that has diversified into renewable energy production for local biomass boilers as part of the 1200acre holding.

The farm’s loan is part of the ENABLE Guarantee facility provided to Oxbury by the British Business Bank. The purpose of the original loan was for a combination of a biomass boiler refinance following extensive development and a strategic land purchase.

Visiting Cherrington Farm really helped bring to life the ultimate benefit of our ENABLE programmes. It was also interesting to hear first-hand some of the challenges facing UK farmers today. We are grateful to the Crow family for their hospitality. Gaynor Dykes Senior Manager, Origination and Relationship Management

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Notes to editors

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by improving access to finance for smaller businesses. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank’s core programmes support over £12.4bn Read footnote text 1  of finance to more than 90,000 smaller businesses Read footnote text 2 .

As well as increasing the supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success.

The British Business Bank is also responsible for administering the government’s three Coronavirus loan schemes and its Future Fund, together responsible for delivering £80.4bn in finance to 1.67m businesses. These schemes are now closed to new applications.

British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. Wholly owned by HM government, the Bank and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found on the British Business Bank website.

About Oxbury

Oxbury was established by bankers, farmers, agricultural businesses, and technologists, combining the worlds of farming, financial services, and technology to create the UK's first and only fintech with a full banking license, focusing solely on serving customers in the agricultural sector.

Our mission is to transform the agriculture finance market and enable the sector’s drive towards a more productive and sustainable farming and food supply chain.

British farming and food production is undergoing an evolutionary transition, and farm businesses need more customised finance and data driven solutions to help facilitate the generational shifts necessary to enhance sustainability, provenance, and production standards across the farming and food supply chain.

Our tech team makes up one-third of our total headcount, reflecting our deep strengths in technology and digital banking. Oxbury Earth is our own purpose-built, cloud-native tech platform, delivering industry-leading digital banking, and payments solutions.

The Oxbury Earth platform also elevates data analysis for farmers by blending agronomic, financial, and environmental performance data and enables us to collaborate across the entire agrifood supply chain to enhance traceability and resilience.

Oxbury's co-founders are serial entrepreneurs. James Farrar (CEO) was the founding CEO of ClearBank, the UK’s first new, full-service clearing bank for over 250 years and former senior business banking executive at major UK banks. Nick Evans (MD) founded, ran, and successfully exited F4F (part of Adaptris), a software business with 2,500 customers in the global agricultural and animal health sectors. Both previously held senior roles in the UK banking industry.

The extended leadership team has many years of experience running some of the largest farm-supporting organisations and includes the former chairmen of NFU Mutual and AMC (Agriculture Mortgage Corporation).

Oxbury is a brand name of Oxbury Bank Plc which is authorised