Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC)

The Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) is a trade association specialising in the agricultural supply industry. “Our members are in the animal feed, grains and oilseeds, fertiliser and crop protection sectors. Essentially, our members are supplying end-users such as farms, animal feed and flour mills and maltings.” explains Garry Rudd, Technical Manager of the association.

“We provide vital information for our members, and part of that is health & safety and employment law which we access via Croner.

“We also provide lots of information and support on things like Brexit and any other legislation matters, run conferences and send regular briefings on a wide range of subjects. 

We also run trade assurance schemes for the industry which give full supply chain assurance alongside farm schemes such as Red Tractor.

“We currently have 280 members, as well as 4,500 trade assurance participants.”

The AIC have been partnered with Croner for a decade, and have been providing employment law and health & safety support to their members through the advice line since 2008.

“We’ve been signed up with Croner for ten years now. I started my role around 13 years ago, and we utilised Croner’s services 2 or 3 years into my time here.

“We wanted to provide HR and H&S advice to our members as a benefit of their membership.  We wanted to get something different—something new—to provide to our members, and Croner provided what we were looking for. We didn’t look anywhere else at the time, and we’ve not really looked elsewhere since.”

Croner’s advice is now a key benefit of an AIC membership, but where does it rank among other features?

“Where the Croner advice line ranks among member benefits is really dependent on the member themselves and what their need is,” explains Garry, “But overall I believe it is a benefit that ranks very highly.

“The advice line is always open and easy to access if any of our members ever need to make use of it.

“There are some members who use the advice line more than others, but in our bi-annual publication for members we get occasional feedback from members, and that is always very positive.

“Access to Croner’s service has actually given us more knowledge as an organisation, as prior to Croner we didn’t have a service advising on HR and health & safety. For us, getting Croner’s assistance was a necessity, because we wanted to provide that service but we didn’t have the knowledge to do so.

“If someone calls up to ask about employment law, I’d rather they speak to consultants who know what they’re talking about, and, having called them up myself as I know they have the information our members require.

“It is a good selling point to attract new members. We’ve recently taken on a new membership manager, who puts it at the top of the list of benefits of becoming a member of the AIC.

“It also helps with renewals. When a member asks: ‘what do I get for my money?’ we use the Croner advice line as an example, it’s a very useful that respect.”