In the short space of three years, Suir Sprayers Ltd in Co Waterford has been earning a glowing reputation to the point where it’s now an award-winning company. Irish Tractor & Agri caught up with co-owner John Lynch to find out what they’ve been doing right.
2013 may not have been the most ideal time to set-up your own business in Ireland, but for John and Eddy Lynch the ingredients for success were there – and that’s all that mattered.
Now coming up on three years old, the two cousins started Suir Sprayers – a limited company which provides sprayer testing, parts sales and service to all sprayer types nationwide – and haven’t looked back since opening the doors of their stores premises two miles outside Waterford city.
Both John and Eddy have graduated from college with honours degrees and come from backgrounds in farming and farm machinery. They use their knowledge and experience to drive the business and provide the best possible service for their customers, as John explained to us.
“We’re based here in Passage Cross, Dunmore Road, Co Waterford and we’re established two-and-a-half years now,” John stated.
“We set-up this company during a time when all of these regulations were starting to come in, so we moved quickly into spraying mechanics.
“Myself and Eddy are both in our 20s and when we started here Eddy had just finished college and I had done an honours degree in Civil Engineering.”
The Lynchs geared their business towards a sprayer venture, namely due to the ever increasing cost of pesticides, the need to sustain public confidence and a requirement to achieve maximum effectiveness.
For them, it made makes sense to ensure that a sprayer is operating safely and efficiently and since opening the motto at Suir Sprayers is to value their customers highly and pride themselves on delivering top quality advice and after sales service.
Their team of certificated engineers undergo regular training to make sure that they have the latest in EU recognised training to guarantee the highest standard of service.
Sprayer testing, sales, servicing, parts and calibration are all a part of the services in which Suir Sprayers provide and can be explored in greater detail on the company’s excellent website –www.suirsprayers.ie.
As regards sprayer parts, Suir Sprayers carry a wide range in their store for all sprayer types. They also keep a stocking of both Hardi and Hypro nozzles, adapters, caps, etc.
Where they do not have the customer’s required parts in stock Suir Sprayers will endeavour to have them delivered immediately. They also stock Hardi Knapsacks at their store in Passage Cross.
Included in the store is a large stock of health and safety equipment to ensure the risks to the machine operator are minimised. These items include; gloves, face shields, masks, coveralls, etc.
While John admits that the company are still in the process of building their client base, sales seem to be going well nonetheless. In fact, when you ask John how business is at the minute and he’ll tell you: “It’s good. It’s growing all the time.” So how did the idea for Suir Sprayers first come about?
“We got some good advice and I guess you could say that we knew the line of work that we were getting into,” explained John. “If you look at the UK, there are only in excess of 12 specialists doing the kind of work that we are doing and here there aren’t that many.”
Suir Sprayers now deliver their parts all over the country as a complete mobile service, travelling as far as north Meath for their customers via courier.
All orders placed before 1.00pm on any given business day will be despatched same day for next day delivery via Fastway.
There is also free shipping on any orders €100 (Ex. VAT) or more and standard shipping rate is €5.35+VAT for any order less than €100.
Orders can also be collected free of charge at Suir Sprayers’ trade counter at Passage Cross and the company must be notified of damaged, missing, or incorrect items during shipping within 3 days of delivery.
Suir Sprayers also offer their customers a calibration service for all boom sprayers. This involves working with the operator to provide training on how to calibrate a sprayer.
On site they will complete a one-off calibration and will show the operator the correct procedure to calibrate the sprayer before each use.
Calibration will ensure the correct spray volume, pressure, quality along with providing the correct forward speed that the machine is to be operated at. This is a simple procedure and once shown once an operator will be fully capable of calibrating the sprayer upon each use.
In October, Suir Sprayers’ achievements in the short space of three years were recognised on a nationwide scale by Enterprise Ireland.
Representing his company, Eddy Lynch won the Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur competition in the Best Established Business category in the both the Waterford and Regional Finals for 2015.
A cash investment of €20,000 was won by winning the Waterford final and a ticket to the final eight at Google Headquarters in Dublin was gained from winning the Regional Final in Fermoy, Co Cork.
“It was obviously a great honour for the company to get the award and hopefully now we can continue to live up to it for years to come,” said John.
With the current trend that this company find themselves in, everything points towards promising careers for John and Eddy as another successful family business looks to be on the horizon.
For John, the business is still in its early stages in many ways but he’s certainly excited about the potential. “At the minute, we’re growing all the time and we’re just looking to grow our client base now,” he stated.
The creation of this company has already been an accomplishment in itself for the Lynch, but there’s no doubt that more success awaits.
Suir Sprayers Ltd
Address: Passage Cross,
Dunmore Road, Co Waterford
Web: www.suirsprayers.ie
Tel: 051 821 500
E-mail: [email protected]
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 2, February 2016
