A historic business link going back almost 120 years was severed this week after the troubled Co-operative Group relinquished control of its farming arm.
For £249 million, the Wellcome Trust became steward of nearly 40,000 acres of prime UK farmland and more than 240 new staff.
Included in the bundle was the 850-acre Rosemount Farm by Blairgowrie, and major food processing and packaging sites at Carnoustie and Longforgan.
For the Co-op this was a deal driven by necessity.
The mutual’s financial woes have been well-documented, and the food business gave them the opportunity to realise significant funds needed to pay down debt and invest in the wider retail, funeralcare and insurance business.
But being forced to sell off the crown jewels is never a good situation to be in, and I doubt that there was a huge amount of celebration from the Co-op’s senior management group as the ink dried on the sale agreement.
However, there are positives to be taken from the deal.
The main upside is that the buyer is a long way from being a fly-by-night asset stripper looking to make a quick buck.
The Wellcome Trust is the world’s second-highest-spending charitable foundation, which is dedicated to driving improvements in human and animal health.
It spends more than £700 million a year on supporting research projects globally and funded, in large part at least, the sequencing of the human genome as well as supporting the introduction of front-line drugs used to fight malaria.
Its comments on acquiring the Co-op farming business gave me confidence about the division’s long-term future as a sustainable unit.
The trust pledged to develop and invest in the Farmcare Trading business, while maintaining existing services such as the Co-operative’s pioneering Farm to Fork education initiative.
And chief investment officer Danny Truell hit the right note by saying Wellcome’s philosophy was to support its businesses and property holdings “in good times and bad”, and that Wellcome’s ambition was to grow the farming operation for the benefit of “employees, tenants, partners and local communities.”
The sale means a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over the Co-op’s farmers for months has now been lifted.
Assuming Wellcome keeps to its word and I have no reason to doubt that it will, having tracked its work as a backer of research at Dundee University over a number of years then a bright future lies ahead.
It is time to make hay.