‘Agribusiness Solutions from Ireland’ was the handy booklet Treza Gallogly, the trade representative from Enterprise Ireland, handed me when we met in Auckland.

There were over 20 businesses that included well-know names like Abbey Machinery, EasyFix, Keenan’s, Hi-Spec, Tanco, McHale and Dairymaster. There were other less well known companies also such as Cashels Engineering, Allingham quadcrates and Dooley Brothers.

“These firms have developed a reputation for durability and reliability and are at the forefront of improving the efficiency and profitability of agricultural enterprises,” said Treza. New companies continue to emerge. Grassometer, a device that measures grass, is new to the market and set to make its first appearance in January 2014, Treza told me.

Dooley Bros. in Kilkenny is 50 years in business and only started exporting their silage trailers to New Zealand last year.

“It was actually an Irish guy who was working with a contractor on the South Island that got us the first enquiry,” Joe Dooley of Dooley Bros. told me. After making the sale, he contacted Enterprise Island and found himself sharing a stand at a manufacturers’ trade show in the North Island where he sold all the trailers he brought out.

“I have another two units sold that will be sent out in December. The exchange rate can be volatile, but we invoice out in euro so that covers us,” Joe said. His plan is to identify a distributor in New Zealand that will stock and sell his products in the country.

Denis Madigan, an Irishman originally from Ennis, now has a large dairy farm and contracting business and is the distributor for Hi-Spec Engineering.

“We have worked with Denis since 2010 as it is important to pick the right distributor,” Eoin Keane, sales manager for Ireland, told me. They send out a lot of different machines from slurry tankers to bale splitters. Sales have been growing strongly for the last number of years.

Transport is a big challenge as it would cost €4,000 to €5,000 to get a container out there. “It means it is vital to ensure the container is packed well,” said Eoin.

McHale is the market leader for the integrated baler wrapper in New Zealand and with grass growth taking off in the fields, I passed a number of its machines on the road.

“We have been selling in New Zealand for 16 years and are distributed by Power farming,” Paul McHale told me. We actually use New Zealand as a testing ground, particularly in Southland and along the west coast as conditions are very similar to Ireland with heavy yields of wet grass,” he added.

“This works to our advantage and the Fusion took off there first. It has been a very good market and while sales might fluctuate with the milk price, the grass still grows and has to be baled,” he added. All the machines are made in Ballinrobe with the large machine rolled on and rolled off for transport, while the smaller ones are sent out in containers.

Dairymaster was originally asked to come to New Zealand in 2005 when a vet there had identified their system as a solution to the mastitis issues he was confronting.

“He had seen our low slippage system in the UK and asked us to test it on five farms. After that he got leading equipment distributor Craig Burrows to distribute it and it has been growing ever since,” Fergus O’Meara, international manager of Dairymaster, told me.

“When we started selling rotaries it was like we were selling ice to the Eskimos. But our parlours, with their high level of technology to reduce labour, have become popular,” he added. Rotaries account for 40% of sales in the North Island but it’s nearly all rotaries in new conversions in the South Island where the biggest one was 80 bails.

“Farmers continue to look at technologies such as cluster cleansers, which have been approved for use by Fonterra, heat detection systems, auto drafting systems and even in-parlour feeders. We have even started selling our scrapers into new herd homes,” said Fergus.