Gormley Contracts provides an exceptional agricultural contracting service and also manufactures and erects agricultural buildings for customers across Fermanagh, Tyrone, Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal. We dropped into their Belleek, County Fermanagh base to find out more about this multifaceted operation from founder / proprietor Jamie Gormley.
Fermanagh man Jamie Gormley isn’t going to be caught with all his eggs in one basket. As the driving force behind Gormley Contracts in Belleek, he provides customers with a wide range of services that comprises excellent agri contracting solutions as well as the building of sheds, they carry out all types of shuttering and structural steel work.
Jamie, who hails from a farming background, has been contracting for 13 years. Reflecting on the inception of Gormley Contracts, he notes: “I’ve been at it since 2002. I was reared on the family farm in Belleek, where we reared suckler beef.
“In ’02, I went out on my own and started from scratch contracting with a second-hand Massey Ferguson 6180 and a Vicon 130 baler.”
From the get go, Jamie became synonymous with excellent baling and silage solutions and that still accounts for a large percentage of the overall business. Today, he operates a fleet of modern New Hollands in conjunction with a Welger round baler, Strautmann silage wagon, John Deere loading shovel, front and rear Krone mowers and a 30-foot Claas rake.
For slurry, Gormley Contracts offers a 1000-metre umbilical pipe slurry system and also run two 2250 Abbey slurry tanks with sludge pumps. A number of other services are also provided, as Jamie reveals:
“I also run a Spearhead 565 telescopic hedge cutter as well as doing dump trailer / low loader hire with two 14-tonne dump trailers and a 13-tonne digger with saw head and mulcher attachments.”
While the contracting end of the business is going from strength to strength, the agri building / shuttering / steelwork services also offered to customers in Fermanagh and the surrounding counties mean there is rarely a quiet day for Jamie and his team!
CE-approved for all structural steel, Gormley Contracts provides a first-class construction service to farmers and those in the commercial sector. “We build a lot of sheds and do a lot of shuttering,” the Belleek man notes. “We provide a full service from start to finish. We can take on a greenfield site and fabricate a shed to the customer’s needs as well as shuttering for slatted tanks, silage pits and retaining walls etc. We fabricate and erect sheds for both agri and commercial customers.”
Between all aspects of the business, gainful employment is generated for three people full time as well as another three or four part time workers. “The contracting is mostly silage and slurry,” Jamie continues. “I’m at it 13 years now and have a good, solid customer base built up at this stage. I’m doing between 10,000 and 12,000 bales per year and up to 800 acres of grass. We go from mid-January until the end of March with the slurry.
“We’re very lucky in that 95% of our customers are suckler beef men and the beef man is no worse off now than he was ten years ago. While the dairy farmers have been hit hard by falling prices, the beef man is still tipping away nicely.”
At the heart of the operation is an excellently well-maintained fleet of machinery and equipment. Jamie keeps the gear as fresh as possible and continuous investment makes sure that customers consistently receive the highest level of service possible. In 2015 alone, the fleet was enhanced by the addition of a Krone mower and a fresh New Holland tractor.
“I tend to source fresh second-hand tractors from England and buy all the machinery new,” he reveals.
Regarding his approach to managing the business and running it as a viable, self-sustaining commercial enterprise, Jamie says hard work and discipline have been the key components of his success to date: “I run a very tight ship. You have to be efficient in order to offer a good service. There are plenty of 24-hour days that go in during the peak season and you have to be prepared to do that.
“I’m fortunate, too, with the timing of the work in that we have a lot of silage that’s cut in the last week of May and the first two weeks of June and we then have time to do the first cut of silage for the sheep men in early August before the rush of the second cut starts in mid-August.
“Of course 2015 was a hard year with the bad weather but you battle through it and you hope for better weather the following year.
“Thankfully, we are busy all year around and – between the contracting and building – I have a steady flow of income over the year now, which is important. If we’re not contracting, we are building and that allows me to keep the men on over the winter etc. Indeed, I often find that winter can be busier!”
At home, Jamie also farms just over 300 acres alongside his father, James. “We keep between 180 and 200 sucklers. We kill around 25% of them and the rest would be sold as weanlings in the local marts,” he states.
Looking to the future, Jamie will continue to provide the same stellar service for which he has become renowned in the border counties of the north west. Further investment is also on the cards: “I am in the process of getting started on the construction of a new purpose built 5000 square foot workshop to expand on our engineering services.
“I’m also hoping to buy a new digger in the near future to run the mulcher and the saw head, as the existing digger is tied up a lot of the time doing construction work,” he concludes. “At the moment, I’m trying to source a digger with high flow auxiliary hydraulics for the mulcher and saw .”
At Gormley Contracts, nothing is left to chance.
Gormley Contracts,
Dulrush,
Belleek,
Enniskillen,
County Fermanagh.
Tel: 0(044)7765331881
Email: [email protected]
www.facebook.com/GormleyContracts1
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 11, December 2015
