If We Can, You Can

Author:

Ralph Thompson

Business:

Silvermoor Equestrian Haylage

Published:

13/05/2009 23:23:00

I farm 450 acres on the Duke of Northumberland’s estate at Alnwick from where I run my business, agricultural contracting and producing equestrian haylage.

I left school when I was 16 and enrolled at Kirkley Hall Agricultural College, to study a National Diploma in Agriculture. The course at Kirkley consisted of a year at College, a placement year, and then the final year back at the College.

It was in the placement year that I travelled to Australia to drive a combine for 7 weeks, as well as starting my first business as an Agricultural Contractor. Technically I wasn’t supposed to be doing this, as employment should have been away from the family farm (I’m sure the college still think I worked for a local farmer, which is true in a round about sort of way! ).

From a very early age and like a typical farmers son, I had always loved tractors, machinery, summer days spent in the fields harvesting and sowing next seasons crops. This was how I spent most of my holidays.

Starting a contracting business was my childhood dream, inspired by watching various contractors come to Silvermoor with their big shiny machines. I’m not nearly so keen on them now! The romance soon wore off with broken down machines our dreadful weather and some irate farmers!

I made the decision to start a contracting business realising that the family farm was not large enough to support both my parents and myself, and a new venture or a job off the farm was necessary.

I’m not too keen on being told what to do, so with this in mind, armed with a new round baler, a second hand tractor, and second hand bale wrapper with my friend Rob working for me, I set up ATS Agricultural Contractors. Rob was on the same course at Kirkley.

Orders for work came instantly with two local contractors packing in being a major help. Rob and I spent more time in our tractors than at College in our final year! 12 months or so later I had two members of staff. I remember looking at their time sheets, seeing they regularly worked 90 and 100 hours a week, and I kept a record of my own hours the next week, I did 120! I didn’t count them again!

If nothing else the contracting business certainly taught me how to work hard. I steadily built up the business adding more services each season such as spraying, combining and hedge cutting. At its peak ATS had five staff through the summer and offered a stubble to stubble service.

As well as the contracting business I was running the farm which had 250 acres of arable, a few beef cattle and 50 acres of temporary grass which was used to produce haylage. It was this small area of grassland that developed into what is now my main enterprise.

My parents began by making haylage for their own horses and the liveries we offered in 1994. Very soon we found that people were commenting on how well the horses looked .Those people and other local horse owners began asking if we could supply them with the same product.

In 1999 I started re- baling large round bales, into mini wrapped bales distributing them locally direct to horse owners. Demand outstripped my re -baling production system so I had a decision to make. Did I limit the business to a local scale or look to expand?

I was ready for my next venture. Having learnt I was not going to become rich contracting, and having a short attention span and needing a fresh challenge, I realised it is the start up stage of business which I love. Once they’re up and running I tend to look for the next opportunity.

Customer feedback showed that our product was well liked and some market research revealed there was a great enough market to sell into. But I needed to find a better production system, and I was also pretty sick of forking haylage into a baler after 5 years!! My trusty fork was getting worn out! It had three new handles and two sets of prongs in that time.

I knew that my method of re- baling was too slow, it produced inconsistent bales in shape and weight, with the end product being anonymous and awkward to transport. There were benefits of the re-baling system in quality control, and utilizing staff in the winter months. Big baling in the summer made the best use of weather windows.

With these factors in mind, and excited that this could become a successful business, I began to search the internet for a solution to my problem. Soon I found a haylage processing plant made in Manchester which converted large bales of haylage into 20kg bags which were palletized, exactly what I was looking for.

I arranged to see a demonstration and took some large round bales in order to get some samples to show existing and potential customers.

The demonstration and subsequent samples were a real success. The machine was certainly better than me with my trusty old fork! I was confident a business could be built from this, although the start up costs were fairly high.

I had a shopping list which included Processing Plant, generator, Forklift, Delivery Vehicle, modifications to the farm buildings, a square baler and wrapper, a website, marketing & design costs.

Next was the question of how to finance the operation. A little bit more research revealed that there was funding available from the rural development scheme, so I put together a business plan with help from a consultancy company and submitted it.

Wwe must have ticked the right boxes as the funding was approved...I make that sound very easy but there was many hours and more meetings than I care to remember involved.

I knew early on the importance of branding and marketing; it is these areas that create the difference between a venture which helps to make ends meet, and one which can stand on its own two feet grow and thrive.

Therefore I invested a fair amount of time and money into the design of a logo, a website, packaging and brochures - the bare essentials needed when looking to create a brand. After much deliberation I settled simply on Silvermoor Haylage for my product name.

The investment in the brand certainly has paid off many times over. Initially when approaching retailers to sell my product, because my packaging was excellent as was the content, all I was selling was myself, I converted nearly every prospect into a sale and the odd ones who were difficult to get into in the early days are selling my product now.

Since 2005 the business has developed from 50 acres of grass leys, a sales area with a radius of 30 miles, and 10 retail outlets, to around 1000 acres cut, over 60 retail outlets, plus 3 wholesalers, with a sales area of Northern England and Scotland.

I am about to recruit a full time sales person as I intend to double production this year expanding my sales area South and West, as well as diversifying slightly into selling large bales of haylage.

My short business life has been a steep learning curve with so very much more to learn, the best thing I have done was to enrol on the strategic development programme at Durham Business School, which was recommended to me by a friend who owns a very successful plant hire company.

I vividly remember George coming to talk to me after a shoot. His words were, “What do you know about business? You need to go on this course.”

George had been on the course a few years back. And he was right - I learnt more about business in a year than I had up to that point

The course was for owner managers of businesses of any type, and in a nut shell it worked a like Sat Nav, taking your current position, where you want to go, and how to get there.

Initially I was quite nervous about starting the course; I was far younger and less experienced than any of the others being 25 at the time. However I soon built up my confidence learning and being reassured I was on the right track.

The course was extremely practical and I worked on my business throughout. The workshops included Finance, Marketing, Operations, Innovation, Product Development, and Change Management.

For each of the workshops, a different specialist was brought in to share their experiences and knowledge. There was also a mentoring side of the course where you chose any of the tutors who would come out to your business. There was no pass or fail only profit! Hopefully anyway.

The other great experience was mixing with the course members who were all from diverse backgrounds such as Property, Law, Construction, Electrical Contracting, even cheese making!

It was great to hear the others ideas, and strange that no wonder how different our businesses were we all had the same challenges, and were able to apply the same techniques. I would always come home full of enthusiasm and ideas.

A great benefit was in taking time away from work allowing me to see my own business from a different angle like a fly on the wall.

As a result of the Strategic development programme I have definitely fast tracked my progress, making my business more efficient and more profitable, and I also have a more confident enterprising view.