Established in 1997, Slievenamon Agri Services’ mission is to “provide as best we can a quality service that meets the needs of the farmers in a safe and secure manner”. It’s a philosophy that has stood the family-run enterprise in good stead.
Based in Drangan, Thurles, South Tipperary, they offer an Agricultural Contracting service with advice and care. Their enviable reputation has been built on providing a professional service for all farming needs. At all times an emphasis has been placed on personal services, reliability and attention to detail.
Brothers Richard, John and Martin White joined forces to set up SAS 22 years ago but the family’s involvement in contracting goes back to 1970 when their parents, Pat and Eileen, started the ball rolling.
Indeed, Richard is well known the length and breadth of the country as a hard-working and committed national chairman of the Association of Farm Contractors (FCI).
“I suppose you could say it’s a labour of love, we don’t know anything different,” remarked John White in conversation with Irish Tractor & Agri.
Always looking to innovate, Slievenamon Agri Services would have been among the first batch of contractors to sow maize under plastic back in the late nineties when it was a much more difficult task than it is these days, due to the quality of plastic that was used back then.
Then in 2000, they started to provide umbilical slurry spreading and were one of the first in the country to provide this service.
The Whites offer a comprehensive agri service ranging from seed to feed. They provide a range of services which includes umbilical slurry spreading, maize, whole crop sowing and harvesting, spraying round and square baling and wrapping, silage harvesting, slurry spreading with splash plate and trailing shoes, all types of reseeding and tillage work, dung and fertilizer spreading, spraying, hedge cutting, mulching and all general agri activities.
“We also spread lime for Gleeson Quarries of Laffansbridge,” revealed John. “Thankfully, we are very busy at the minute, mainly on the slurry side of things. We have two umbilical systems on the go and operate within a 15-20 mile radius of our yard.”
Back in the day, father Pat used the old double chop system before moving to a trailed precision crop. He was using David Brown, Deutz and Zetor tractors over the years. When John and his brothers took over the business, they embarked on a policy of continuous investment in their state-of-the-art fleet of tractors and associated machinery.
Today, the Whites run a modern fleet of 6 Class, 3 John Deere and 2 New Holland tractors along with JCB and Volvo loading shovels, 2 Claas 950 harvesters, a Class combine and 3 Claas mowers along with rakes and tedders.
“We’ve always operated Claas harvesters and purchased our first tractor in 2014. They have performed well for us and are very reliable. We try to change tractors at 5,000 hours. It doesn’t always work out that way but that is the aim.”
The brothers and their fives employees are highly trained and experienced in all aspects of agricultural contracting and there is a range of services to suit farms, large and small. Each and every job is completed to the highest of standards.
Down through the years, SAS has developed strong relationships with their clients which is one of the reasons why they keep coming back to them time after time. They understand their clients’ needs and can be relied upon to deliver on time. Their hands-on approach ensures that work is carried out as efficiently and effectively as possible.
“All our work is practically repeat business so our clients must be happy with the service they are getting from us,” John acknowledged. “The way we work is we like to get in and get a good job done at a reasonable rate. We pride ourselves in our service and doing what needs to be done.”
As a consequence, their services are very much in demand at this point in time. “Business is not going too bad. The weather was kind on us during the winter so we have no major complaints and we would be optimistic about it continuing that way.
“Dairy is very strong at the minute and there is more silage being cut. There’s a lot more work happening on farms. We wouldn’t have any ambitions for expanding the business any further, just concentrating on looking after what we have. We have approximately 100 customers on our books I’d say and we greatly appreciate their continued support,” he concluded.
Committed to providing their customers with a cost effective and useful alternative for many of their farming operations, by utilising SAS’s services, farmers free up more time to concentrate on others areas of their farm and eliminate the need to invest large sums of money in equipment that they may only need a few times in a year.
Slievenamon Agri Services
Drangan, Thurles, Co. Tipperary
Mob: Richard: 086 1742587 | John: 087 2596282 | Martin: 087 7982479
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 7 No 3, June/July 2019
