Farming business established by Strutt & Parker founders being sold by… Savills
£200m farm set up by Edward Strutt and Charles Parker in 1918 is being offered for sale first time on open market.
The founders of venerable estate agency chain Strutt and Parker have had much to make them turn in their graves recently including when the company was bought by French bank BNP Paribas.
But now there’s another reason. The farming business that school friends Edward Strutt and Charles Parker started up in 1918 three decades after establishing their estate agency is being sold, by rival Savills.
The East Anglian farm business is separate to the estate agency business but is central to Strutt & Parker’s historic claim to be an agricultural estates specialist.
The business, which includes five farms, is also likely to be sold to a foreign billionaire, according to the accountancy firm advising on the sale, Deloitte.
£200 million
Strutt & Parker (Farms) Ltd is being offered for sale at an undisclosed sum but is estimated to be worth £200 million and is being sold for the first time in its history.
It comes with 13,000 acres in Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire and is said to be one of the UK’s largest farming businesses.
It turns over £21 million a year and includes 121 homes that generate rents of £1 million a year, a business centre, workshops, light industrial units, a renewable energy business and a fledgling natural burial company based at a site in Chelmsford.
“Growing regional and global demographics coupled with climate change are driving the need for greater food production as well as increasing the demand for housing and other facilities in the South,” says Alex Lawson, Director of Farms and Estates, Savills (left).
“Having evolved during the past one hundred years into the company it is today, Strutt & Parker (Farms) Ltd is in an exceptional position to further transform, increase revenue and capital appreciation.”