Based outside of Westport, Co Mayo, Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd is a company renowned in its area for its excellent work and reliability to get the job done in a timely and efficient manner. Irish Tractor & Agri caught up with one half of its ownership in Daniel Bourke recently to learn all about its origins, the machinery and the state of business today.
In the space of just eight short years, the Bourke brothers in Clogher, Co Mayo have managed to grow a thriving plant and agri business from the ground up.
Daniel and Geoffrey Bourke haven’t looked back since ‘Day One’ and today business is as steady as ever, with four tractors and four lorries in the company’s fleet.
Employing a reliable workforce, the two brothers operate a company which specialises in a wide range of agricultural contracting services, as well as plant hire work.
Irish Tractor & Agri touched base with Daniel Bourke, who largely looks after the agri contracting end of the business, to find out more about a company with an immense reputation for carrying out quality work.
“We’re going at the agri contracting six or seven years now and we’d be at the plant hire eight years in total,” he said.
“On the agri contracting end, we’d specialise in round baling, slurry spreading, agitating, lime spreading, hedge cutting and mulching.
“We’d have machines on hire as well and have four tractors and four lorries in our fleet here.”
Indeed, the fleet has grown year on year down in Clogher with a couple of new McHale products being added in 2021.
It’s all a far cry from where Daniel himself started out with he and his brother’s new venture back in 2014, but he outlines how he knew he’d likely end up with his own agri contracting outfit one day.
“We always grew up surrounded by machinery and tractors as our father always worked in that area when we were children. He taught us how to drive at a very young age and I guess that’s where the love, or some might say disease of machinery started.
“I had been working with a few agri contractors over the years and I suppose that’s where I grew the love for it,” he said.
“I was with Eamon Sheridan in Ballinrobe for four or five years before I decided to go out on my own, in the end, me and the brother would go into it together.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd has seldom been busier than it is at the moment, but it’s not without its challenges.
Rising costs across so many different sections have been the ultimate downside to the busy times as of late.
“We’re awfully busy at the moment here,” said Daniel. “It really is thriving but it’s getting a bit out of hand with the price of diesel going up and the cost of machinery as well.
“Everything is going up and hopefully things will start to steady in that regard because the prices are massive at the moment. The cost of fuel and machinery and rising staff costs are making it difficult to keep our prices down and keep our customers happy, we want to keep these customers, they are after all the back bone of our business and the reason we are able to grow, it’s very hard to raise prices on these farmers as we know they are facing some of the same increases.”
Factor in the Covid-19 pandemic, and the government lockdowns which followed to try and combat the spread of the virus, and it’s safe to say that the past two years were unprecedented for a company like Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd.
While the agri contracting end of the business was not overly affected by the pandemic, the plant hire end certainly was.
“It definitely would’ve had an impact on the plant hire side of things because our machines more or less stopped,” the co-director outlined.
“During the first lockdown (in Spring 2020), we were mostly at slurry spreading, lime spreading and hedge cutting but, overall, you had maybe nine weeks off and you won’t get that back in a year.
“We still had plenty for doing, it’s a job where we work seven days a week, as trying to keep everything up to a high standard and making sure we are offering our customers the best service we can. Only for our love for the machinery we would have never kept going through the tough times, there is nothing easy about this business, its hard grafting every day of the week and can be very hard for the family man or to be anyway social, especially during the summer months.”
Despite the challenges, Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd has still managed to hit the ground running in 2022.
Business is good and the work couldn’t be done without the company’s excellent machinery fleet, which sees our John Deere tractors at the forefront of it.
Daniel doesn’t stray to any other brand when it comes to choosing his tractors.
“I’ve always liked them. They’re driver friendly, have good power and are very reliable,” he said.
“We bought a new Fusion last year and a new McHale rake as well. We also bought two lorries, one of them in Kilkenny and the other from McElvaneys in Monaghan.
“We also have a few diggers in the fleet, a swamp machine we bought off Gaynors and depending on how the year goes, we would hope to add another tractor to our business.”
So, what has been the secret to success for Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd over the past seven years or so?
How has a small start-up grown into a thriving business with a reputation for excellent work around its area?
For Daniel, earning trust from customers down through the years has been an integral part of its growth and success.
“We provide the best service that we can and our machinery here is fairly good,” he stated plainly.
“We keep the machines maintained to a high standard and, on top of that, I think our customers know that we’re reliable as well.”
Looking towards the months ahead, the co-director certainly sees challenges but feels the overall picture is very positive.
“The hopes are to progress and expand, I suppose. It’s going to be a tough enough year with the cost of things at the moment, so we’re hoping to push on and you’d never know after that.
“We’re always open to new ideas here and the summer should be very busy for us but, like everything, it’s weather dependant,” concluded Daniel.
Bourke Bros Plant & Agri Ltd
Clogher,
Westport,
Co Mayo
Mobile: 087 416 4647
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 10 No 3, May/June 2022
