From their base in Drumraney, Moran Agri Contractors provide a comprehensive range of services all year around to farmers from across South Westmeath and beyond. We spoke to Ronan Moran to find out more about this exceptional, second-generation, family-run enterprise.
Pointing out that Moran Agri Contractors is a vastly-experienced and professional operation could be construed as an exercise in understatement considering that the genesis of this highly-respected, flexible and multifaceted business goes back more than half a century.
It was in 1967 that Alfie Moran started providing contracting services locally to his fellow farmers. Today, Alfie runs the business alongside his son, Ronan, and they provide a full range of services. As it says on their Facebook profile: ‘Whether you want to sow it, grow it or mow it, we have you covered’.
As farmers themselves, the Morans are imbued with an innate understanding of the prompt and efficient solutions a contractor must deliver on a consistent basis. “Yeah, I suppose there would be a great tradition in the family of both farming and contracting,” confirms Ronan, whose brother Colm is also involved part-time in the family business. “My father grew up on a farm and he would have started the contracting business in 1967, when he was only 17. He worked very hard over the years and built the business up through hard work and looking after his customers.
“It’s a limited company now and I’ve been full time here for two years, having been involved part-time literally all my life prior to that – helping out during school holidays, at weekends, in the evenings, etc. It’s going well. We have built up a very good reputation and we’ll be doing everything we can to preserve that.”
By giving farmers a service they can depend on, Moran Agri Contractors benefit from a large volume of repeat business and are extremely busy all year around, offering unbeatable reseeding, ploughing, mowing, spraying, and slurry services. When we spoke to Ronan, they were getting through a lot of reseeding and overseeding work… “We’re very busy reseeding at the minute. Dairy has taken off massively in this area and they are all taking farms and the first thing they are doing is reseeding them.”
For ploughing, Moran Agri Contractors run a Gregoire-Besson five-furrow reversible plough, Dowdeswell 4.5 metre disc harrow, PÖTTINGER three-metre disc harrow, Kuhn power harrow for one-pass seeding and a Cross 6-metre ring roller for levelling, rolling and finishing as well as a three-metre Einbock grass tine harrow for overseeding grass.
Meanwhile, maintaining the family tradition, Alfie’s brother Finian Moran is also a local contractor, providing keen silage solutions with a modern outfit including 2018 Krone BigX 630, 2019 JCB 427 and a fleet of 22ft Broughan trailers.
“Finian has a good silage outfit and we do the mowing using a set of ten-foot Claas [Disco 3200] mowers, front and back. We also have a 15-metre Berthoud sprayer with flow control, section control and GPS.”
Moran Agri Contractors also have a two-tonne fertilizer spreader while for slurry they run a 4,000-gallon SlurryKat tanker with 9-metre dribble bar. “We provide the full service from spraying to sowing, fertilising, levelling, rolling, and post emergence spraying – whatever the farmer needs. All it takes is one phone call from the farmer and the job is done,” Ronan notes.
From their base in Drumraney, County Westmeath – about ten minutes from Athlone at the heart of the midlands – Moran Agri Contractors generally cover everywhere within a 20km radius, from Kilbeggan up as far as Abbeyshrule in Longford. “We go where the work is,” Ronan continues. “About 80-90% of it is repeat business and we’re working for a lot of farmers who have been with my father for up to 30 or 40 years. We have reseeded some of those farms twice already and they are on their third circuit now.”
Tractor-wise, the Morans run three Fendts – a 2010 Fendt 820, a 2004 818 with GPS and auto steer for mowing and seeding, and an ’03-reg 714 for spraying. Meanwhile, their yard tractor for feeding is a small Massey Ferguson 6455.
Ronan says building and maintaining strong relationships with customers has been one of the key drivers of Moran Agri Contractors over the decades: “It’s all about trust and relationships – and that is a two-way thing. We look after farmers and they look after us. We are just a phone call away and we will do whatever they need done as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible.
“Time is always of the essence. You need to get in and get it done as fast as possible without affecting quality because the dairy man doesn’t want to be out of grass for any longer than he has to be. So we are geared towards getting in and out, then moving on to the next job.
“We’re also versatile and flexible and we give a complete service, covering every eventuality. You need to be able to do everything and that’s why we have the plough for rough ground, the disc harrow for stony ground, the Einboch for overseeding and the ring roller for levelling it as well as also doing all our own fertilising and spraying. We cover everything. No matter what the farmer wants, every base is covered.”
Although 2020 has been a volatile and unpredictable year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Moran Agri Contractors remained busy throughout. “Farming has continued pretty much as normal,” Ronan concludes. “We started reseeding in March and we were very busy for the six months through to September. I suppose the restrictions don’t affect you all that much as, when you are out on your own in the middle of a field, you are isolating anyway. You’re at the mercy of the weather more than anything. There was very nice weather earlier in the year; it broke a bit but we got through the work and were as busy as ever.”
Moran Agri Contractors Ltd.,
Dunamoney,
The Pigeons,
Athlone,
County Westmeath.
Tel: 087 9221086
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 9 No 3, May/June 2021
