With 50 years’ experience in the design, development, manufacture, repair and reconditioning of beet harvesters and seeders, Armer Salmon has forged a stellar reputation for excellence across Ireland and the UK. We dropped into their busy workshop in Enniscorthy to get an update from founder Jer Murphy, who runs the family business alongside his son Jamie.
The father-and-son team of Jer and Jamie Murphy have forged an unrivalled reputation as Ireland’s most reputable experts when it comes to beet harvesters; be it sales, service, manufacture, repairs or reconditioning.
Located in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the family business that is Armer Salmon specialises in reconditioning beet harvesters and seeders to the very highest standards, providing invaluable services to farmers from across this island and throughout the UK.
Stocking an extensive range of parts – many of which are machined in-house – Armer Salmon have the capacity to provide farmers with a comprehensive range of services. Suffice to say, there’s nothing that Jer and Jamie can’t do with a beet harvester, from troubleshooting and repairs to complete top-to-bottom overhauls, including stripping, shotblasting, respraying and painstaking rebuilds.
On the back of delivering decades of value-for-money service, their reputation has spread far and wide through word of mouth to the point where Armer Salmon regularly does business with up to 20 customers from the UK, with reconditioned harvesters sold to farmers in Cumbria and Edinburgh in recent weeks alone. This gives a fair indication of how highly and widely they are regarded as specialists in their field of expertise!
“We’re flat out at the minute,” Jer told me when I interrupted his busy schedule on the eve of beet harvest season in late October, 2021. “This is our busiest time of year. Obviously, everything is weather dependent, but the big push in harvesting generally starts in November / December, weather permitting.”
That’s not to say that Armer Salmon’s services aren’t in big demand across the calendar. To the contrary: “We’re at this all year and there’s no real respite. We’d take in ten or twelve machines a year from farmers for reconditioning and on top of that we’d also buy and sell four or five more every year.”
Reliable reconditioned beet harvesters can provide farmers with vast savings so it’s no real surprise that Armer Salmon has developed a large customer base in Ireland and the UK. As well as regularly delivering parts to their customers in the UK, their exemplary track record is such that they also recondition machines for farmers based across the Irish Sea…
“Two UK customers sent me harvesters for reconditioning over the past year,” Jer confirms. “They know they can trust us to do good work to a very high spec. These are guys who would have bought parts from us over the years, going way back to the sugar factory days.”
Jer, who worked in the sugar factory, was a partner in Murphy, Lowry & Reilly, working extensively on beet machinery before the demise of the Irish sugar industry in the mid-noughties, when Armer Salon also stopped manufacturing machines. He bought his partners out in 2005 and was granted permission to hold onto the Armer Salmon name, relaunching the business in 2006. Between reconditioning, repairing, modifying and buying and selling beet harvesters and seeders, the business has since gone from strength to strength.
Armer beet harvesters are smaller than self-propelled, designed for fodder only and don’t pick stones. These small harvesters are suited to beet crops and ideal for relatively small areas rather than covering large volumes. To supplement their robust and reliable reconditioned machines, Armer Salmon provide a back-up service that is second to none:
“We include a full twelve-month warranty with every reconditioned harvester,” Jer continues. “We carry a full range of parts for beet harvesters, beet seeders and cleaner-loaders. When a farmer rings us from the field with a problem and tells us over the phone what the symptoms are we can quickly diagnose what is wrong and set him straight. Practically every day we’d have lads ringing in and we wouldn’t have to go out to the field. We’d know what’s wrong and would come up with a solution.”
Jer and Jamie, who also do a lot of steel repair work on trailers, etc., are totally hands-on and carry out all the work themselves. “It’s grand – there’s plenty of work for the two of us,” says the former. “It’s heavy work and it’s hard work. I did take on lads before but most lads don’t want to work the way we work. For the last three months, we’ve been working twelve hours a day, from 8 in the morning until 8 in the evening. It’s a long day but we really enjoy what we are doing.”
The workshop is fully stocked with all the necessary equipment and tools required to completely overhaul beet harvesters, including guillotines, drills, press brakes, etc. “I was a fitter in the sugar factory before I went to work on the harvesters,” Jer reflects. “I wanted to be where the machines are and I got to know them inside-out. I know every nut, bolt, bearing and pump and have it all in my head.”
An average beet harvester recondition takes around 250 hours. “The two we took over from England went to 450 hours each and they came up like new. We stripped them off, shot blasted them, resprayed them and then rebuilt them to a very high spec.”
Armer Salmon can also manufacture new beet harvesters and built three brand new ones for Simon Cross and Cross Engineering six years ago. “As these were retailing for €70,000 plus VAT while the reconditioned machines were selling at €30,000 plus VAT it was a no-brainer to go for the reconditioned,” Jer states. “It’s hard to justify buying them new as there aren’t that many farms with huge amounts of beet. Most farmers might have 25-30 acres so they don’t need new machinery. You’d have to have more work for it to pay for it. A beet harvester is a long-term investment, especially for a farmer doing only five or ten acres.”
And nobody will protect that investment better than Jer and Jamie Murphy at Armer Salmon!
Armer Salmon,
Johnstown,
Clonegal,
Enniscorthy,
County Wexford.
Tel: 086 3079985 (Jer) / 087 2410106 (Jamie)
Email: [email protected]
Web: armersalmon.com
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 10 No 2, March/April 2022
