Business View Oceania | March 2020

19 20 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 AGR I FARM IMPLEMENTS than cutting corners and putting lighter steel, or smaller bearings, or small pulleys or cheap v-belts, we go the opposite way and make a product that has a lot of features that we can sell to the customer, first and foremost, and then we talk about price. We still remain cost competitive but we don’t cut corners with the quality of product. As soon as the customer sees the features and the strong quality of what we make, we can generally get a sale.” The mulchers Agrifarm manufactures today are vastly improved from the 1986 models they first produced. Ranging from 1.5 metres wide to 9 metres wide, these are big machines sold primarily “for use out west.” The aerators they’ve been producing for about eight years range from 1.5 to 6 metres wide and are also a significant part of the business. “We’ve always had a good range of products and every few years a new machine comes into the line,” says Brett. “There’s no CAD (computer aided design), I’m a bit old school, I still have a drawing board sitting next to me; we actually design a product on paper still. The whole setup includes drawings, cutting lists for all our products. Month by month we decide what we’re going to build, it might be mulchers or aerators, whatever we’re getting low on. I see what is required to keep our stocks up so we don’t miss sales and then we produce a cutting list off the computer.” The cutting list notes the materials needed – steel is the material ordered in the largest quantities and it is purchased from three companies in Newcastle. Each of those companies has an opportunity every month to quote the job and the best price gets the order. All material arrives as pipe, flat bar, RHS tube, or plate. Brett explains, “We have an optical profiler to profile our own plate shapes off drawings. And the flat bar, angle iron, etc. goes through our punch and shears and is turned into components that have the correct size holes off our drawings. All our bending and welding is done in-house. We have three welding bays, our own paint bay. Everything is painted, then it’s an assembly job, year apprenticeship with Howard, which was a large Australian agricultural company that began in 1923 when the first rotary hoe was produced. After that I worked in the engineering department for another five years. At that stage Howard was taken over by a new company and ceased manufacturing in Australia. So in 1986, three of us (my father, Ralph Trengove, who was in charge of R & D at Howard; Tim McCormack, Engineering Manager at Howard; and myself) bought some of the Howard’s plant and manufacturing equipment at the auctions and began operations at Taree as Agrifarm.” In the early 2000’s Ralph retired, and the other two partners bought his share of the business. Then in 2005, Tim retired and Agrifarm was sold to a company with several other businesses. Brett remained on as General Manager and in 2014 he had the opportunity to buy Agrifarm back as the sole owner. He admits, “It was a good feeling to have total control over what you do and it’s been great ever since. Rather