Dairy farm calls for investors to milk tax scheme

There has been heated debate in recent weeks about the merits of the Government’s budget tinkering with the Employment and Investment Incentive (EII) scheme, which shelters tax for investors and raises cash for smaller businesses.

Some in the technology industry, for example, criticised the scheme as being pretty much useless. Businesses in other industries, meanwhile, are ploughing ahead with it. Almost literally. EII might be considered unwieldy by the start-up crowd, but does anyone fancy a tax- efficient investment in a herd of cattle?

Business Venture Partners, a Dublin-headquartered SME corporate finance house founded by Elliott Griffin, is raising €2.25 million for the Tipperary Milk Farm Company. As business names go, it is as self-explanatory as it sounds.

The promoters are local businessmen and farmers John Walshe and Paul Bowes. They have leased 1,000 acres of land in Tipperary to set up a large-scale facility to take advantage of the lifting of EU milk quotas.

Bowes, a forestry funds veteran who previously tried to set up an industrial-sized farm in the UK, told me that since the company had leased the land it had no asset to take to the bank to secure a loan.

They had to come up with another funding idea, so took the highly unusual step of tapping EII investors for cash to build the milking facility. A milk-processing company will provide a further €2 million to buy 1,200 cattle, and the total cost of the farm will be up to €6.5 million.

Griffin reckons BVP has had a lot of interest in the project from city slickers such as doctors and lawyers. If they ever hold a site visit for investors I would love to be there to see Dublin’s finest traipsing their way through the muck.