Devenish accounts show scale of actions taken in restructure

The accounts detail significant actions to restructure the business since early last year. It includes a £7.5m private placement to raise equity, the elimination of non-commercial activities and disposals of businesses in North America and Mexico that closed on February 29 this year as well as the sale of the high-profile Meath estate, which closed in December 2023.

Devenish chairman and biggest shareholder Owen Brennan also repaid a £3.7m loan to the business in full during its 2023 financial year, the accounts show.

The Irish Government paid €11m for the 223-hectare Dowth Estate, in the Boyne Valley in Co Meath, slightly above the asking price.

It includes modern research facilities, a Georgian mansion at Dowth Hall and the neighbouring Netterville Manor as well as a number of archaeological sites.

The property will be turned into a new national park.

Devenish Group operates in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Turkey, Kenya and Uganda, and the US and Mexico.

The accounts just filed for the group’s Northern Ireland-based parent company, Devenish (NI) Ltd, say management expect the business to have returned to profitability in its 2024 financial year, which ends on May 31.

The loss for 2023 followed a £4.5m profit in 2022. Turnover in the 2023 year was up, at £270m.

“Financial results for the year were disappointing,” the accounts record.

They go on to say that the Devenish board and executive management have moved to tackle what are described as the “challenges facing the group from both a trading perspective and the levels of debt accumulated”.

The accounts show the business had £32m of bank loans outstanding at the end of its financial year last May and an interest bill for the year of €4.5m.

The accounts say new CEO, Tony McEntee, was appointed in March last year with a mandate to restructure the group to focus on its core animal nutrition business including elimination of non-commercial activities and disposal of surplus assets. Mr McEntee is the uncle of Justice Minister Helen McEntee.

A review of the Government’s Lobbying Register last year showed Mr McEntee – as Devenish CEO – was in contact with “government ministers and departments to inform them of the forthcoming sale” of his company’s research farm in Meath, just over a month after he was appointed.

The entry says Mr McEntee specifically sought to give Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney and Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys “advance notice” of his company’s intention to sell the farm. He was also seeking to “understand the level of potential interest from the Government”, according to the register.

The filing said Mr McEntee’s contacts included “text messages, emails and phone calls”. The estate was eventually placed on the open market before a deal to sell it to the State was struck.