How would you describe the mood in Irish agriculture in 2018?

I would say it’s quite mixed but people are still positive overall. Milk prices are good this year, but on the tillage side it’s been a tough year weather-wise. One sector seems to have a tough year and the other doesn’t. Farmers have always adapted to this and will put something aside in a good year to cope when the bad year comes along.

Outside of Ireland, what markets does Major export to?

About 65% of everything we manufacture goes abroad. So the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada are our main export markets. We’re working right now with a distributor in the US so we’re just getting going in that market.

How challenging has the UK been with the weaker sterling?

We’re actually busier than ever in the UK. We thought this year would be down but we’re actually up. Selling isn’t a problem. The biggest challenge is trying to maintain your margin when the currency is fluctuating. We’ve hedged forward our currency at £0.90 to the euro this year and totally covered ourselves, which has worked out pretty well.

What’s the mood among your UK customers?

We’re actually quite optimistic for the final few months of 2018 and early 2019. All the dealers in the UK are speaking really positively, particularly looking ahead to the last three months of the year. Dealers want to stock ahead and have their product ordered because nobody knows what’s going to happen in March 2019 or if there will be tariffs on goods moving in and out of the UK.

What tariffs could hit machinery in the event of a no-deal Brexit?

We’re still working out the potential tariffs but it’s not scaring us that much. It’s more the time and administration that’s going to be involved. We export to Switzerland and the amount of time and paperwork involved is huge. It’s honestly easier to export to Australia than it is to Switzerland. But we do a lot more business in the UK and if we have to go down that road of dealing with the extra administration it’s going to be challenging. But if that’s what has to be done we’ll just get on with it. There’s absolutely no talk of us pulling back from the UK.

What are the biggest challenges for an export-focused business in Mayo?

There’s no great difference being a manufacturer here in Mayo when you’re shipping to markets as far away as Australia and South Africa. The road networks are much improved and it’s only 2.5 hours to Dublin now. Our biggest challenge is access to broadband. It’s a huge problem for us. We pay €360/month for a satellite that gives us broadband. From that we get 20MB up and down and we’ve to run all our servers for here and our UK office from that satellite. If that satellite goes down everything is gone for us. We’re lucky to even have that because there’s a company beside us that has no broadband access.

Sisters Eibhlin Murphy and Aine Lecky have been shortlisted for the 2018 EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards in the international category. The awards take place on Thursday 25th October in Citywest hotel, Dublin.