This was seen as a significant move by the company to consolidate the position of its brand in Ireland and re-build market shares in its key machine areas of grassland machinery and tillage equipment.

Traynor’s had been Irish distributors for more than 20 years. In recent years, Pöttinger had a financial input into the company’s affairs.

In the six months since then, there have been significant changes put in place at the company which has been renamed as Pöttinger Ireland. This new company is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pöttinger in Austria.

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Apart from obvious cosmetic changes to the company’s premises in Clonmel, there have been changes to the structure of Pöttinger in Ireland.

The company now believes that it is geared up to turn a new leaf in what it considers to be a valuable farm machinery market.

The structure and operations of the company have now changed. The emphasis is on Pöttinger machinery alone. Dealer growth will be the key to the company’s success, as will the task of developing the brand through machinery demonstrations and technical back-up.

Pöttinger has now confirmed that its new structure will be supported by two area sales managers, splitting the country north and south in a line between Dublin and Galway.

David Osborne, well known to Pöttinger users up to now, will cover the northern half, while newly-appointed Sean Fitzgerald will cover the south of Ireland.

Michael Noonan as back office manager and Noelette Ryan in administration will provide additional support to the team and to dealers and customers from the Clonmel office.

Between them, they have more than 30 years of experience with the Pöttinger range.

That team will be supported by Ben Stokes, who has completed some new training programmes at the Pöttinger factory in Austria. Ben will provide technical and demonstration support.

Michael Burke remains in the parts department and has experience of managing the parts needs of the Pöttinger range for a number of years. Michael Burke has installed the new PotDoc on-line parts management system at Clonmel.

The PotDoc system is an electronic catalogue, with parts and technical service updates for service teams at dealerships.

This is being rolled out to Irish Pöttinger dealers in the coming months.

The system allows dealers to order parts through the internet and download a range of service and part advisory bulletins direct from the factory.

The Clonmel base will also provide a bunker parts stock for dealers and Pöttinger owners in Ireland.

Parts will only be available through Pöttinger dealers and the company will not provide retail parts directly to farmers, rather to their local dealers.

Billy Moore remains responsible for service at Pöttinger Ireland. Billy has many years of service experience with the full range of Pöttinger machinery in Irish conditions.

Pöttinger Ireland will be taking part in the FTMTA Farm Machinery Show next week at Punchestown.

The company will be showcasing the new X8 butterfly mower for the first time in Ireland, along with a new Torro silage wagon that incorporates the new auto cut automatic knife sharpening system.

The company will also be showing models from its plough and pneumatic one-pass tillage range, as well as smaller mowers, tedder and rakes.

Heinz Pöttinger comes to FTMTA Show meeting

Heinz Pöttinger, of Pöttinger of Austria, owners of Pöttinger Ireland, will be the lead speaker at a special Institution of Agricultural Engineers (Ireland branch) meeting to be held on Thursday 7 February at 5.30pm on the first day of the FTMTA Farm Machinery Show at the show venue in Punchestown, Naas, Co Kildare.

The conference meeting will be held at 5.30pm at the President’s Room in Punchestown and it is open to the public.

Mr Pöttinger, who is joint managing director of Pöttinger, along with his brother Klaus, will give a presentation on how Pöttinger plans to respond to changes in machinery demand across Europe with particular reference to the new company in Ireland.