Established in 2000, Eugene Hughes Agri & Plant Ltd provides an exceptional service to farmers and building contractors within a 20-mile radius of its Kingscourt, Co. Cavan base.
Owner Eugene Hughes runs an impressive agri contracting and plant hire business which continues to go from strength to strength. Also a suckler and beef farmer, Eugene has assembled a stellar fleet of tractors, excavators, dumpers, grass, slurry and reseeding equipment to cater for all your contracting and plant hire needs. He employs five people full-time and two part-time.
The services provided by Eugene and his team include pit and baled silage, slurry and muck spreading, ploughing, reseeding, groundworks, concrete works and dump trailer work. They also draw maize for local growers.
Committed to providing superior service and complete customer satisfaction, Eugene Hughes Agri & Plant Ltd has an array of machinery to carry out your work quickly and efficiently, providing you with value-for-money and an alternative to investing in your own expensive equipment. The company’s success can be attributed to the knowledge, experience, skill and expertise of its staff as well as the quality of its machinery. Eugene and his highly-skilled and highly-motivated crew deliver the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
Eugene runs an all-John Deere fleet of tractors. He has five in total, namely a 195m, a 155m, a 6830, a 6620 and a 6510. His grass machinery includes a John Deere 7750 forage harvester, two Krone front and back mowers, a Taarup 10ft trailed mower, a Volvo L70 loading shovel, a SIP rotor rake and NC, Red Rock and Broughan silage trailers. He has two NC trailers (18ft and 20ft), one Red Rock (18ft) and a new Red Rock 20ft trailer which was purchased from Clarke Machinery. In addition, he runs a McHale 5500 round baler and a Connor bale wrapper.
Eugene Hughes Agri & Plant Ltd makes about 1,700 acres of pit silage and 6,000 silage bales each year.
For slurry / dung spreading, Eugene utilises two Abbey 3,000-gallon tankers (one with dribble bar) and two HiSpec 2,000-gallon tankers. He also has a trailing shoe system, an umbilical system with 1,600m of piping, a Red Rock slurry mixer and an NC muckspreader 10 metres cubed.
When it comes to tillage, the Co. Cavan operation has a Kverneland four-furrow reversible plough, a Kverneland four-furrow standard plough, an Aitchison stitcher / seed drill and two Kuhn power harrows.
Dedicated to plant hire and groundworks are two Case 130CX excavators, two Broughan 20-tonne dump trailers, one Red Rock 14-tonne dump trailer and a Red Rock three-axle low loader. Eugene’s suppliers include Meath Farm Machinery, Martin’s Garage Ltd, O’Neill Tractors (Crossmaglen) and Clarke Machinery.
All machines are maintained and serviced on a regular basis to avoid downtime, with some of this work being carried out in-house. Machines under warranty are sent to the main dealer.
There is no such thing as a quiet time for this highly-regarded contractor who divides his year between agri contracting and plant hire work. Ploughing, sowing and slurry spreading take precedence in the early part of the year, followed by silage and baling during the summer months. The winter months are devoted to the plant hire side of the business.
“We do groundworks, concreting and kerbing throughout the winter. It means we are busy all year round,” Eugene explains.
The former Kingscourt Stars footballer has built up a large and loyal client-base in counties Cavan, Meath and Monaghan.
“We’re only a stone’s throw from the Meath and Monaghan borders, so we have a lot of customers in those counties as well as in Cavan. Our customers are a mix of farmers and builders,” he says.
“We’re fortunate to have some great, long-time clients who have stuck with us through thick and thin. We’ve been cutting silage for the same people since we started. We pride ourselves on our reliable service. It’s a big thing for us. When we say we’ll be there at a certain time, we mean it!
“We always go the extra mile. We get a lot of repeat business which is a sign that our customers are happy with us.”
Eugene also has a busy home life. Married to Deirdre, they have four young children – Katie (11), Cillian (nine), Shane (seven) and Emma (two). The affable agri contractor would like to take this opportunity to thank his customers and suppliers for their continued support along with his staff for their hard work, dedication and skill.
Eugene Hughes Agri & Plant Ltd
Moyer,
Kingscourt,
Co. Cavan.
Telephone: 087 2390588
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 10 No 6, November/December 2022
