Shanahan Bros are well established Agricultural Contractors and quarry owners serving the Limerick North Cork and North Kerry regions.

Agricultural contracting services provided include silage cutting, full tillage service , slurry spreading and bailing. From their base in Newcastle West they also supply and deliver crushed stone, sand and gravel to farmers and the building industry. We caught up with one of the brothers behind the operation Tim Shanahan to find out more.

Between Agricultural Contracting and quarrying Shanahan Bros provide a varied service and operate one of the most impressive fleets of machinery in the Munster region. The Shanahans are keeping alive a proud family tradition and with decades of experience and all equipment maintained in pristine running order provide a service that is quite simply second to none.

Reflecting on the genesis of the exceptional family business Tim Shanahan notes: “My family have been involved in contracting going back to the early 1970’s. My late father David started the business and today there’s myself, my brothers Martin and Tony and my son David.”

David Snr started off initially with single chop and double chop harvesters before moving onto self-propelled in the early 1980’s. Soon slurry, ploughing and bailing were added. The seeds were sown as the man might say! Since those early formative years Shanahan Bros Agri Contracting has come a long way.

The Shanahans fleet of tractors mowers and harvesters is mightily impressive! Any connoisseur of quality farm machinery could spend days nay weeks going through it. The fleet consists of Valtra, Fendt  and New Holland. The Shanahans also operate two Krone Big M self propelled mowers a Mk1 and Mk 11 as well as three forage harvesters. In addition they have Komatsu and Volvo loading shovels.

All fleet work is carried out in house. Shanahan Bros have their own modern workshop and handle all their own repairs and maintenance on site. Employee wise they provide full time work to a team of seven  – the four aforementioned Shanahans plus three others-  as well as a number of season workers during peak times.

The strategy has always been to keep the work as close to the doorstep as possible so that an optimum service can be provided. Tim confirms: “We generally work as close to home as we can usually within a 15 to 20 mile radius, this way there is very little downtime and no time wasted driving from one job to another. The weather has a big impact on the season 2012 was a trying year for both farmer and contractor but 2013 and 2014 were good.”

The Shanahans are optimistic for 2015 and with the quarry and contracting are kept busy and hopefully will continue like that for the foreseeable future.

Shanahan Bros Agricultural Contractors
Lisheen
Barnagh
Newcastle West
Co Limerick
t. 069 62493
m. 087 2591745
E mail: [email protected]

Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 2, March 2015

Agricultural Contractors, Shanahan Bros