Sometimes in business you can look back and pinpoint a single event or situation which changed the course of travel for the entire company. For Mayo-based machinery manufacturer Agri-Spread, the game-changing moment came in 2012 when a broadacre (large-scale) Australian farmer approached the company looking to import the Agri-Spread range of fertiliser and lime spreaders.

According to David Murphy, managing director at Agri-Spread, being approached by the Australian farmer was a total stroke of luck.

“A New Zealander had been working on a farm in Cork and saw our spreaders firsthand. He left Ireland to go to Australia and ended up working for this broadacre farmer named John Warr, who said he was looking to start importing and distributing some machinery for the Australian market. The New Zealander recommended us and that’s how we got in touch,” said Murphy.

Connection

The Agri-Spread boss may not have known it at the time but this chance connection would propel his family company to new heights. Australian farmers operate on the edge and farm in some of the most difficult conditions on the planet. They battle extreme weather such as drought and floods (as we have seen recently) and are left to the mercy of the world market as they receive no supports of any form from the Australian government.

To survive under these conditions, Australian farmers must be super-efficient and are extremely focused on their cost base, meaning they tend to be early adopters of the latest technology in farming if it can help them be more efficient.

“When we first started working with John Warr, we brought over a few of our machines and tested them really hard on his 8,000ha (20,000ac) farm. It was a great testing ground for our machines,” says Murphy. Convinced of the product, Warr’s company Warringa became the sole distributor for Agri-Spread machines in Australia, Canada and is now helping the company move into the US and New Zealand.

Murphy says that the challenging nature of Australian farming meant the company was pushed to develop cutting-edge new machines to succeed in the market.

“Farmers in Australia are ahead of the game in terms of size and scale but also the technology they use. The type of technology that the Australian farmer needed was what really drove this business on because it wasn’t something that was really being shouted for in Europe at the time,” said Murphy.

To win business in Australia, Agri-Spread began to look at GPS technology on its spreaders in 2014 in a bid to find a space in the rapidly growing precision agriculture market. The Mayo manufacturer partnered with a company in the UK to develop GPS, precision control and monitoring systems for its spreaders.

“We developed a product that gave us a major foothold in the Australian market. Agri-Spread is now the biggest selling fertiliser and lime spreader in Australia, which is hard to believe for a company based in the west of Ireland,” says Murphy.

“It can cost the typical Australian broadacre farmer as much as AU$1.5m (€1m) just to put a crop in the ground. If farmers can reduce their fertiliser usage by 5%, 6% or 7% using our precision spreaders and control systems, then that’s a lot of money saved for them,” he adds.

Largest market

Australia is Agri-Spread’s largest export market by volume and value. However, the UK is also a significant export market for the company, despite the weak sterling over the last number of years, while Canada is also big.

Outside of Ireland and the UK, around 70% of Agri-Spread’s business today comes from export sales around the world.

To meet its growing export business, the company has invested heavily over the last decade in additional manufacturing capacity but also in quality.

“In 2011 we pretty much doubled the size of our factory in Ballyhaunis as the business was growing rapidly. In 2016/17, we doubled production capacity again but we also invested in quality finishing on our machines with shot-blasting, paint-oven and baking facilities at the site. That would have been an investment of over €1m,” says Murphy.

The company is currently taking its first steps into the enormous US market with the aim of establishing its brand name in broadacre farming regions. Murphy says the aim in the US will be to target customers with large acre farms along the US wheat belt.

With ag commodity prices consistently low in recent years in the US and grain farmers under increasing pressure to be efficient just to survive, Agri-Spread believes it has a chance to win business in the US market with its precision technologies.