Aidan Wickham farms a 100-acre tillage farm on the main New Ross to Clonroche road in Co Wexford. He also runs an impressive agri-contracting, plant hire and haulage business from his family farm. He is helped by his wife Margaret, who looks after the paperwork and ensures everyone is fed, and his two sons Aidan Jr (18) and Jack (16), who are always on hand to help out when needed.

History

So how did it all start? Aidan left school early at the age of 17 and went home to help his father John on the family farm. It didn’t take long for Aidan’s love of machinery to come out, he purchased a secondhand single-row Armer Salmon beet harvester not long after returning to the family farm. Aidan used his beet harvester along with his father’s Ford 4600 tractor to pull beet for his neighbours in the area. “Beet was a very popular crop at the time in our area, so I decided to buy a beet harvester and see what happened,” explains Aidan. His father John had a new Krone round baler on the farm at the time also, and it was these two machines along with the little 4600 Ford that basically started the agri-contracting business.

From there, the business grew and expanded into different areas of work. Aidan started baling and wrapping silage in the late 1980s – firstly with his father’s Krone baler but later upgrading to two Welger round balers and a mounted Kverneland wrapper. “We covered a wide area baling and wrapping back then. This is what really got us started. There was a few pound to be made back then,” says Aidan.

The business expanded yet again in the early 1990s with silage harvesting added to the portfolio. The machine of choice was a New Holland 717 trailed harvester which was powered by an International 956 tractor. In 1997 their first self-propelled forage harvester was added – a New Holland 1900 which was kept for only one year and replaced by a Claas 695 forager. Corn harvesting started in the mid 1990s, when Aidan purchased a secondhand Fahr 1102 with 10ft cutting head. Silage and corn harvesting is nowadays one of the main enterprises of the contracting business.

There was a major milestone in the business in 1996, when Aidan bought his first new tractor – a Case 5150 from Murphy Bros in Ferns. That year also saw the purchase of a one-year-old Case 5140 and a twin-row Armer Salmon beet harvester. Case were the tractors of choice all the way up until 2004, when the first Fendt tractor rolled into the yard in the shape of a new 818 Vario purchased from Donoghues in Enniscorthy. The Fendt 818 proved a popular tractor and was followed by the purchase of two Fendt 930 Varios in 2005 and another Fendt 818 Vario in 2006.

In 2007, following the demise of the Irish sugar industry the previous year, Adian made the decision to purchase a Scania 530 artic truck to help soften the loss of his sugar beet enterprise by replacing it with road haulage. A second Scania R500 artic was added to the business in 2012.

A major investment was made in 2013 with the establishment of a new plant hire enterprise within the business along with the purchase of a Volvo EC220 tracked digger and Smyth dump trailer.

Services provided

Aidan provides a vast array of services to his customers, utilising the latest machines available to get the job done efficiently and, more importantly, correctly. This year will see Aidan cover well over a 30-mile radius of his base in Clonroche, encompassing Wexford, south Kilkenny, Waterford, Wicklow and Carlow.

The year starts off with dung and slurry spreading, which takes up to two to three months. Ploughing, tilling and sowing are next, which makes up a large amount of Aidan’s contracting, sowing 4,300 acres of corn using all Vaderstad machines purchased from Cooney Furlong Machinery in Enniscorthy, while also ploughing between 1,800 and 2,000 acres.

Maize sowing is another service provided, with Aidan joining forces with another contractor who helps with the sowing of the 500-600 acres in exchange for Aidan’s help with the harvesting in the autumn.

The silage harvesting is the next mountain of work to get through, which sees Aidan cover over 3,200 acres along with more than 11,000 wrapped bales each year. The grain harvest will follow shortly thereafter, with Aidan getting through 2,200 acres of corn and baling over 10,000 round and big square bales.

To finish off the year the maize harvest is completed for both Aidan’s own customers and the customers of two other contractors where he provides the harvester.

On top of all this work each year, the road haulage part of the business sees two trucks busy for up to eight months. The two Scanias can be regularly seen up and down the roads around Wexford and further afield hauling grain and fertiliser for the main co-ops. Aidan hauls a great amount of grain and fertiliser for Cooney Furlong Grain Company, which keeps the trucks going strong over the summer months.

The plant hire enterprise stays steady every day for between eight and 10 months, with site clearance and land reclamation making up most of this work. Aidan also provides an industrial loader hire service which sees two loading shovels busy in grain stores and nearby ports at various times during the year.

Along with the 100 acres of tillage on his own family farm, Aidan also rents 500-600 acres. However, this accounts for only 10% of his work, with agri- contracting and plant hire being the main enterprise.

Aidan employs three full-time staff in the business and up to five seasonal workers as needed. “I am very lucky with the guys I have working for me. I can rely on them and be sure the job will be done 100%,” explains Aidan. He went on to point out good staff are very hard to find nowadays.

He says the boom saw many people go into the building trade for the money and, when the recession hit, many of these people were forced to emigrate to help support their families. He says this was a major problem for contractors as there weren’t people there willing to drive tractors anymore.

One of the main issues facing agri-contractors currently, he says, is: “Everything has to be done in a hurry nowadays – the window for getting the job done is getting smaller and smaller.”

This means bigger machines to get through more work in a shorter time frame, especially when the weather can be an issue. This has forced contractors to heavily invest in bigger, more modern and efficient machinery at a huge financial cost.

This leads us to the next issue, which is the dreaded money collection. Aidan tells us: “Doing the work is the easy part. Collecting the money for the work is the hard part.”

Customers have fallen into the habit of prolonged periods of credit at contractors’ expense; this puts extreme pressure on the contractors’ cashflow and ability to maintain a top level of service to these customers. “We have some very good customers, luckily enough, who pay on time, but we still have the problem of getting the money in to meet the bills,” explains Aidan.

He goes on to tell us that 2009 was an extremely tough year in his business for a number of reasons. Milk prices were lower than ever and his customers simply hadn’t the money to pay him.

On top of that the recession was starting to really hit, leaving many part-time farmers who had good jobs redundant, suddenly without their much-needed extra income. All this had a knock-on effect on Aidan’s cashflow, making the day-to-day running of the business harder. Banks and finance companies tightened up on their lending, which made borrowing money extremely difficult also.

On the point of financing machinery, in recent years nearly all manufacturers have their own subsidised finance packages with very attractive rates, as low as 0% in some cases. This makes keeping machinery updated easier as Aidan no longer has to shop around different lending houses for the best deals.

Health and safety

The year 2009 was also very tough for another reason. After a fatal accident during the busy silage season, Aidan made the conscious decision to reassess health and safety within his business. “It really opened our eyes to the hidden dangers with machinery. We all take chances every day and it’s this complacency that can lead to an accident.”

Since then Aidan always makes sure the machines are maintained properly and all safety systems are in place. Machines are updated regularly to help avoid breakdowns and increase safety along with operator training on the dangers involved, in particular the small things we regularly overlook.

Machines

Combines: Claas Lexion 580 with 30ft header, Claas Lexion 650 with 25ft header.

Forager: Claas Jaguar 970.

Tractors: 3 X Fendts, 936 X 2, 724, 3 X John Deere, 6210R, 7530 X 2, Claas Arion 640, Landini Legend 165.

Sprayer: Bateman RB26 30 M Self Propelled Sprayer.

Cultivation: 2 X 5 furrow Kverneland reversible ploughs, 6 M Vaderstad Rexius Twin, 6M Vaderstad TopDown, 6M Kuhn power harrow.

Drills: 2 X Vaderstad corn drills 6M Rapid and 4M Spirit.

Slurry Kit: Major 2600 Tanker, Major 7500 agitator.

Dung Kit: Joskin 18t rear-discharge spreader.

Trailers: 5 X Smyth silage trailers, 2 X 24ft tri-axles, 1 X 22ft and 2 X 20ft. Smyth Dump Trailer.

Mowing: Krone B1000 triple mowers, Kverneland front-mounted and 10ft trailed combination.

Balers: 2 X McHale Fusions, 1 X Fusion 3 Plus and 1 X Fusion 2, Massey Ferguson 187 big square baler.

Loaders: 2 X Volvo L90, 1 X JCB 414S.

Grass line: Claas 3100 twin-rotor rake, Lely Lotus 6-rotor tedder. McHale 991 wrapper.

Trucks: 2 X Scania, 1 X 580, 1 X R500.

Digger: Volvo EC220 Tracked Digger.

Favourite machines

We asked Aidan what his favourite machine both past and present is. “Definitely hands down my favourite machine from the past is a Case MX 150. I bought it new and put 9500 hours on the clock and the only repair ever needed over that length was a forward reverse clutch pack. My current favourite machine is the new Fendt 936 Black edition. She really is a fantastic machine to operate and the fuel saving is substantial. My dream machine, however, would be the new Fendt 1050 Vario”.

We also asked why he choose the brands he has. “We are not loyal to any one particular brand – we look at the machine that can get the job done in the best way possible, and we also look at resale value, reliability and back-up service. Another very important factor for us is fuel consumption.”

Aidan can spend anything from €250,000 to €500,000 each year on diesel depending on price. Mr Oil located in Adamstown, Co Wexford, is the only fuel supplier he uses. “We always used Mr Oil and have had no issues with fuel quality. From the time I call them I will usually have a delivery within one hour, which means a lot in this game, where time is a major factor along with the weather”.

Future Plans

Aidan is optimistic for the future of the business. He believes that, with the big change in dairy, farmers will be looking for a reliable established contractor to get the work done efficiently and correctly. He also hopes to continue to grow his customer base by providing the best possible service with the best possible machinery. “It is important for me to keep machines updated to avoid costly repair bills and downtime, this helps us provide a top-quality and reliable service to our customers which is more and more important going into the future.”

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