Since its inception eight years ago, Ormiston Plant Repairs in County Cavan has developed a reputation as one of Ireland’s premier plant, and agricultural machinery specialists. We dropped into the company’s base at Stradone, 10km from Cavan town, to get an insight into day-to-day operations from founder Roy Ormiston.
Roy Ormiston has been involved in the plant / machinery repairs sector all his working life. The Cavan man has a tremendous passion for his work and a wealth of experience of all types of equipment – including plant, tractors, trucks, trailers and agricultural machinery.
Ormiston Plant Repairs boasts affiliations with all major equipment manufacturers, – CAT, JCB, Hitachi, Case, Massey Ferguson, New Holland, John Deere etc. – and the range of services provided covers everything from recovery and low loader solutions to diagnostics, mobile repairs and preventative maintenance.
Roy and his team, including his brother John, possess an in-depth knowledge of all kinds of machinery – if it moves, they can keep it moving; if it has stopped moving, they will get it back on the road!
Since he decided to go out on his own, Roy has never looked back. Alongside his wife Karen he has built up a profitable and sustainable business with a personal touch, employing four local people and providing a professional, consistently-dependable service to customers large and small.
“I set the business up eight years ago,” the affable Cavan man notes. “I have worked in this area since I was a young man and I don’t really know anything else. I worked for P Elliott and was also with plant companies in Kells, County Meath.”
Having accumulating over 20 years’ experience of plant and machinery, Roy decided that the time was right to go out on his own: “I was already doing repairs here beside the home place for years and that started to get busier, while things were also getting tighter in Kells, so I opted to go out on my own and do subcontract work for a plant company in Kells while also working for several other companies that I’d built up relations with over the years.
“I had a nice little customer base built up already so I expanded the workshop and invested in more machinery and equipment and things have gone well for us. So far, so good…”
Ormiston Plant Repairs can repair, refurbish and service literally any machinery using their comprehensive workshop facilities in Stradone or can alternatively offer an onsite repair service (using their fully kitted out mobile unit).for all plant machinery used across the construction and agricultural industries.
Boasting comprehensive servicing experience of a wide range of machine types (tractors, excavators, dump trucks, bulldozers etc.) and covering an exhaustive list of manufacturers, they can provide prompt, professional and cost-effective solutions to exact customer requirements.
Every job is fully insured and guaranteed; Roy operates the latest diagnostic equipment for all types of vehicles and plant. All electrical and mechanical faults are repaired to the highest manufacturers’ standard and a full welding service is also available.
Ormiston Plant Repairs boasts complete expertise of all aspects of vehicle repairs including camera systems, motion sensors, hydraulic hose pipes, engine overhauls, final drives, slew motors and track motors. They also manufacture hydraulic hoses and carry out a lot of work for Waterways Ireland and many other established companies, including a full range of servicing and repairs for the revolutionary Zero Grazer nationwide.
Such is the exceptional level of service provided by vastly experienced, highly-professional and motivated technicians that Ormiston Plant Repairs is enjoying unprecedented demand for its services. The founder is pleased to report that he’s as busy as he’s ever been:
“The work is hard got, but we’re extremely busy, thank God. We’ve always been very busy and I suppose we have been lucky too in terms of the companies we have worked for. As they have become busier, so have we. For example, I’ve been fortunate to be associated with Zero Grazer and that has gone very well. I’ve been working with them since 2005. There are 400 of those machines around the country at present and we handle their breakdowns and repairs and also retrofit and deliver them as well as bringing back the trade-ins, so we get a fair bit of work out of that.
“We can repair all plant, trucks and machinery as well as cars, vans and buses. We work for a number of agricultural contractors on all makes of tractors, harvesters etc., including Joe Brady Agri Plant & Haulage, Ultan Carroll Engineering and Ollie O’Reilly Agri Contractors. Our work takes us nationwide, from Cork to Dublin and Belfast to Carlow, where we work consistently in-house and on the road for Waterways Ireland.” Other customers include Boliden Tara Mines and Irish Gypsum.
As well as a modern workshop with all the latest equipment and a fleet of self-contained mobile units, Roy also operates a stunning Scania R420 with Faymonville low loader – tri-axle, rear-steer. “We have a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter breakdown van, which is shocking well equipped,” he notes. “It has everything you need in it. We also run a Volkswagen Caddy van, a Ford Transit van and a VW Touareg jeep.”
The landscape has changed dramatically since Ormiston Plant Repairs was conceived. In keeping with the genesis of more sophisticated and computerised machinery, this has become a very high-tech sector and Roy has had no option but to move with the times. He has embraced the challenge to the extent where he now specialises in work of a more technologically-advanced nature:
“It’s almost a whole new ball game,” he confirms. “The jobs are changing with technology and the nature of the work is changing. We’re big into wiring, electronics and diagnostics – areas which are becoming more and more important. We have a lot of diagnostics here and a serious volume of tools for all plant and vehicles. We also carry a good stock of parts to make sure we get every job done as quickly as possible without any unnecessary downtime.”
Looking to the future, Roy’s strategy is simply to continue to provide the best possible service: “We have come this far now and thankfully the last few years have been fairly comfortable. The recession hit us but it also opened our eyes and we came out of it stronger. We have never been busier.
“At the end of the day, if your customers are not happy with you they will leave. I have a lot of good customers who have been with me for years and it just goes to show that if your work is good people will come back. But there’s no room for complacency because the opposite is also true: you can do a thousand good jobs but, as soon as you make one slip, you’re history.”
Ormiston Plant Repairs,
Lisnaglea,
Stradone,
County Cavan.
Tel 087 2364006 / 1321615
Facebook: ormistonplantrepairs
E: [email protected]
www.ormistonplantrepairs.ie
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 7, August 2015
