\n<\/p>\n
Fertiliser shortages caused by the Iran war have driven up costs for UK farmers by up to 70% and will have a \u201cdramatic\u201d impact on food prices globally next year, according to one of Britain\u2019s most powerful property and farming companies.<\/p>\n
Mark Preston, executive trustee of the 349-year-old Grosvenor Group, controlled by the Duke of Westminster, said fertiliser \u201cwas already quite expensive\u201d before the 50% to 70% surge in prices since the start of the Iran war in late February.<\/p>\n
The effective closure of the strait of Hormuz \u2013 which Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday could soon reopen \u2013 has throttled global supplies of fertiliser, crucial to growing food crops.<\/p>\n
Preston said that, although UK crops were unlikely to be affected this year as most fertiliser had already been used, the knock-on effect could arrive next year. \u201cFarmers are not buying that fertiliser, they\u2019re sitting on their hands and hoping things will improve, which they probably won\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The multibillion-pound company owns one of the UK\u2019s leading farms \u2013 a dairy and arable holding in Cheshire, England \u2013 as well as rural estates in Lancashire and Scotland plus swathes of Mayfair and Belgravia in central London.<\/p>\n
In Cheshire, the company produces millions of litres of milk for customers including Tesco and M\u00fcller from the sprawling Eaton estate, where the Duke of Westminster has traditionally resided, since the 1400s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a very, very dramatic problem for the world, not just the UK in terms of food, just because so much fertiliser comes through those straits,\u201d Preston said. \u201cBut farmers can probably do more spring cropping next year rather than winter cropping. So they\u2019ve got a little bit more flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The magnitude of the increase in food prices will depend on when the strait of Hormuz, an important shipping passage where about 1,600 vessels are stranded, opens again.<\/p>\n
Preston said: \u201cThe concern is at least as much, if not more, around food and fertiliser than it is around oil, because there are alternative sources of oil. There aren\u2019t very many alternative sources of nitrogen, for the production of fertiliser.\u201d<\/p>\n
The strait\u2019s closure has cut off flows of liquefied natural gas, an important input for nitrogen-based fertilisers such as urea. The impact on Grosvenor will be limited, Preston added, because the organisation does not use much fertiliser and relies on cow dung, where possible.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The Grosvenor Group owns swathes of properties in high-end London districts such as Belgravi and Mayfair.<\/span> Photograph: Mike Kemp\/In Pictures\/Getty Images<\/p>\n His remarks came a few days after the head of the world\u2019s largest fertiliser company Yara International warned that the war in the Middle East could cause food shortages and price rises in some of Africa\u2019s poorest and most vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n Research by Opinium this week found that 80% of Britons are worried about the rising price of groceries, which stems from retailers passing on cost increases to consumers.<\/p>\n Grosvenor posted an 18% decrease in underlying profits to \u00a370.5m last year, affected by its North American operations. Its UK property business remained a bright spot, however, with 97% occupancy; its biggest project ever, the revamp of South Molton Street in central London including offices, shops, a hotel and 33 homes near Oxford Street, which is due to be completed next year.<\/p>\n Owned by the duke, Hugh Grosvenor, 35 \u2013 one of Britain\u2019s richest men with an estimated wealth of \u00a39.56bn and godfather to Prince George \u2013 the company has an ambition to build 700 social homes in north-west England. So far, 69 have been constructed near Chester and Ellesmere Port, with a further 120 to be built this year.<\/p>\n The group paid out dividends of \u00a353.7m to the duke\u2019s family and its trusts, up from \u00a352.4m in 2024. Grosvenor paid total taxes of \u00a3248m, against \u00a3107.4m in 2024, including \u00a3200m in the UK. This is largely because of UK property sales, which increased personal taxes on income and gains by \u00a361m and corporate income tax payments by \u00a371.9m.<\/p>\n Grosvenor has been investing more in flexible office space, and last week started work on its first directly managed flexible workspace outside London, in Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter.<\/p>\n James Raynor, chief executive of the company\u2019s property arm, said about 23% of its offices in London were flexible workspace, and \u201cwell over 90% occupied, so it\u2019s performing very well\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fertiliser shortages caused by the Iran war have driven up costs for UK farmers by up to 70% and will have a \u201cdramatic\u201d impact on food prices globally next year, according to one of Britain\u2019s most powerful property and farming companies. Mark Preston, executive trustee of the 349-year-old Grosvenor Group, controlled by the Duke of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[7727,187,5569,17136,1023,9154,1466,1725,269,9155,4772,23314],"class_list":{"0":"post-49265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-chain","9":"tag-crisis","10":"tag-dramatic","11":"tag-duke","12":"tag-effect","13":"tag-fertiliser","14":"tag-firm","15":"tag-food","16":"tag-prices","17":"tag-shortages","18":"tag-supply","19":"tag-westminsters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}