Agri Design & Planning Services provides its clients with a reliable and independent service from initial discussion to first use. Irish Tractor & Agri caught up with owner and founder Aidan Kelly recently to learn more about the Co Tipperary-based business.
2021 will see Agri Design & Planning Services (ADPS) marking 10 years in business and company founder Aidan Kelly is as optimistic as ever heading into a second decade.
Operating from Molough, Newcastle, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, ADPS has grown year on year since its formation, with the last three years in particular being exceptionally busy for the company.
This growth is due to the fact that ADPS continually offers the very best services in its field, never settling for second best with customer satisfaction always being its top priority.
Irish Tractor & Agri touched based with Aidan Kelly recently to find out more about the ins and outs of the company, as well as the state of business at the moment.
“Next year it’ll be ten years for Agri Design & Planning Services,” Aidan beamed.
“We’re working in conjunction with the same lads and collaborating now with other companies, but regards staff it’s still just me here.”
Indeed, Aidan has grown his business venture from the ground up and knows the industry like the back of his hand at this stage.
When it comes to building a new dairy unit or even just a new parlour there are lots of things to consider and decide before you get work started on site; Building location, internal layout, building size, site levels existing and proposed, relationship to other buildings, proposed costs, parlour type and size, planning approval, services, water, electricity, drainage existing and proposed, ventilation if for stock, access for both vehicular and stock, cow flow around the buildings and parlour.
ADPS is a company which takes away all the hassle and has the experience to offer the best options and advice available to the customer within their budget.
A qualified architect, Aidan is also a specialist in dairy design start up and set up. He set up a green field dairy himself in 2013.
He has managed to complete somewhere in the region of 2,000 farm designs over the past decade and that number is set to increase further given the current state of business heading into 2021.
“To be honest, business has grown from strength to strength since I started,” he said.
“In the last three years or so, there has been a real dairy boom. It was six or seven years ago when I decided to get into dairy and I’d have a very good understanding of it.”
In that case, business has been flourishing a while now at ADPS but, then again, 2020 has been a year like no other.
This past Spring saw the Irish government enforce lockdown in a bid to battle the Coronavirus pandemic and it affected businesses nationwide. ADPS was no different than the rest.
“Lockdown did have an effect on our jobs at the construction phase, so there were eight to 10 weeks there where our projects would have been shut down,” Aidan explained.
“Planning permission got closed down too, so that had a lot of knock on affects, but since May 18th we have been flat out and hopefully that will continue into next year.”
The signs are looking good for 2021 already for ADPS, where all bases are covered when it comes to design and planning services.
The full list of services that the company provides reads as follows; full planning applications, applications and drawings for exempted developments, exemption certification, applications for retention, reference department costs can be prepared, Milking Parlour Layouts, cubicle housing designs, cattle slatted housing, sheep and goat housing, hay barns and storage shed (Grain Storage), stable design, underpass and bridges over rivers, GPS farm mapping, farm roadway and paddock designs, water infrastructure layout and farmyard redesigns and site surveys.
While word of mouth has been salient in the company’s success to date, Aidan outlined that his farming background has essentially been the key factor above all else.
“My great selling point here is that I’m a farmer myself,” he said. “I can have a conversation about everything and anything with a farmer.
“The other thing is the massive experience that I’ve gained here over the last nine to 10 years. That helps a lot and then there’s the fact that we offer a nationwide service.
“I think so far we’ve done work in over 20 counties in the Republic of Ireland so far, with Donegal, Fermanagh and Sligo being the only ones to date that I haven’t worked with a client in.”
Going on the current rate of business, one would imagine it won’t be long before ADPS covers all 26 counties in the Republic with its excellent work.
Almost a decade on and the company has been nothing short of a success story, but Aidan doesn’t take all the credit.
“Myself and my father (Richard) have be working on 171 acres milking platform with 170 cows,” he said.
“The plan is to possibly grow that up to 190, but I know that it would be very hard to keep everything a float between the business and the farm without the support of my father on the farm and my wife Seána running our home with four young kids.
“With any great organisation, you have to have great people behind you and around you and my father was the reason I went to College and became an architect and he has always been a big driver for me.”
Laurels won’t be rested on either, as Aidan relishes another year where he hopes challenges can be met and the current rate of business at ADPS can carry on.
“I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully, there’ll be more grants to come in for farmers that gives that bit of extra security for them.
“Everyone will be hoping that the situation with Covid can improve next year as well and hopefully it will,” he concluded.
Agri Design & Planning Services
Molough,
Newcastle,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary
Mobile: 085 746 6211
E-mail: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 9 No 1, January/February 2021
Agri Design & Planning Services
