THE Royal Welsh Show, the Winter Fair and the Smallholder and Garden Festival made a combined profit of £639,397 last year.
The year made a splendid start when the Smallholder and Garden Festival attracted 22,250 visitors and made its best-ever surplus of £52,212.
Despite the twin enemies of the recession and the rain, which fell heavily on the second and third days, attendance at the summer show in July reached 220,023 and helped to create a surplus of revenue over expenditure of £389,771.
The final event of the year, the Winter Fair, welcomed 26,058 visitors, the second best attendance figure since it was established in 1990, and made a surplus of £126,706.
The year’s results also reflected a recovery in value of the society’s investments and successful fund raising in the counties.
The society, however, had arrived at a critical point in its development where there was exceptional demand on its financial resources.
“The society is committed to an extensive programme of capital expenditure on the showground and its facilities in order that we maintain and enhance our reputation as one of the world’s leading agricultural societies, staging the UK’s largest agricultural show on the finest showground in Europe,” explained Mr Lewis, chairman of the society’s board of management.
“We are a major player in the premier league of agricultural shows attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every year to Llanelwedd and if we are to maintain this position investment in the showground, our chief asset, is essential. That is why substantial surpluses like those for 2009 are key to our future success.”
A large amount of the society’s income is held in restricted funds. This means it is not for general use but ring-fenced for projects for which it was raised in the first place.
The most costly of these was the new Food Hall to be opened at next month’s show, costing £1.77m. After the show it was hoped to embark on building a new Montgomery Members Pavilion on the former Milk Marketing Board site adjacent to the south-east corner of the main ring.
The third major scheme, the resurfacing of the main ring would involve the removal of the top and sub-soil and levelling, installing drains, a stone raft, a membrane and a sand layer topped with a sand-soil mixture with a natural grass finish. An artificial surface and drainage will also be provided in the Collecting Ring.
Mr Lewis says that none of these major developments could have been possible without the help of the feature counties, a concept introduced by Radnorshire in 1963.
“Unique to the Royal Welsh it has created a family connection between all the counties and a unity throughout Wales which is reflected in the show itself and which has helped to make it the national institution it has now become, one in which all the counties have an equal stake,” he said.