Together, ABF’s agriculture businesses – Frontier, KW Trident, Premier Nutrition and AB Vista – saw a £90 million increase in revenue, to £597 million, on the same period last year. Their profits in the UK and China have also increased year on year, according to ABF’s recently published interim results report.

As ABF’s international supplier of animal feed micro-ingredients, AB Vista has, in particular, delivered sales and profit growth ahead of expectations over the past six months. Critically, it has also continued its high level of investment in differentiating services and new product development. In January it launched a new phytase enzyme, Quantum Blue, with great success – helping unlock greater performance and more value for the animal feed industry than any other commercially available phytase. This follows other groundbreaking developments such as Econase XT, the first intrinsically thermostable xylanase product.

AB Vista’s Managing Director Richard Cooper said: “We are delighted to have made another strong contribution to the ongoing growth of our parent company, complementing the robust performances of fellow ABF subsidiaries like Primark and AB Sugar. We will continue to invest in the development of exciting new products, which in turn will help our customers meet the challenges of a highly competitive market.

“In the last couple of years AB Vista has taken the enzyme market to a completely new level and we are determined that we will continue to lead the industry in product development, research and supply chain efficiency.”