Ben Wrigley, Senior Investment Manager in our Developing Communities Team, talks about how Stockwood’s latest community share offer is aiming to bring the society into full community ownership.

Resonance has been involved with Stockwood Community Benefit Society since the beginning of its extraordinary journey; with our CEO Daniel Brewer, helping them set up the organisation in 2014. This first step was to raise community share capital and social bank debt so the farm could be held for the benefit of the community in perpetuity. It was at that stage that the blended model was designed – allowing low profit farmland to be operated biodynamically and organically, alongside a higher yielding business park powered by renewable energy.

Nearly ten years on it is a real pleasure to be working with Stockwood again on its fourth community share offer, and the third offer through Ethex, to replace the (now) expensive debt used to take the asset into community ownership.

The team at Stockwood is led by Chris Burdett who has farming in his blood, and the generational family connection is maintained through the involvement of Brendan Parsons. You can listen to Chris and Brendan extoll the virtues of the Stockwood model, and the impact on the many people who engage at the farm, in the recent Ethex Cuppa Club (this  edited version is around 12 minutes long).

In this session I pointed out that the Stockwood business was significantly affected by COVID-19, which reduced rents and other income from the business park substantially, alongside rapid rises in the cost of borrowing. Some tough decisions had to be made after nearly a decade of paying a 5% return to shareholders – not least converting share interest payments to additional shares in 2022, and suspending the share interest payment completely for 2023.

However, Stockwood has weathered the storm. The core business is fundamentally very strong with the business park once again fully occupied. The farm is flourishing, and renewable energy income has held steady. The profitability before financing costs (the interest on debt and shares) is impressive and prudently predicted to return to pre-COVID levels in the short term¹.

This is why it is so important that Stockwood raises share capital now and has launched an offer to raise £1.5m over the next six to eighteen months. There are commitments for match funding from several sources, so every pound invested now will lever in an additional pound of investment, doubling the impact of your investment. Expensive debt needs to be repaid, and replaced with shares, so the team can focus on generating impact and delivering activities for the benefit of the community. In my opinion this share raise makes for a business model which is highly impactful and even better placed to generate a return for socially minded investors in the long term. 

Information on the share offer and how to invest are available through the links below. 

Ethex: www.ethex.org.uk/invest/Stockwood2023

EMC: https://stockwoodcbs.org/invest/

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Capital at risk and returns not guaranteed

By purchasing community shares issued by Stockwood CBS you may lose some or all of the money you invest. Returns on investment are not guaranteed.  Investors are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (as you would be with a savings account), and do not have recourse to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

¹ Please note that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.