Coming up on four years since he first started AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd, David Casey is still going strong in the producing and selling of animal feeds. Irish Tractor & Agri caught up with the company’s director to find out more.
Quality value and service are the vital philosophies for the future of every business to some degree, but since David Casey started AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd he lives and dies by them.
Located in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, Casey’s AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd manufactures animal feeds products and maintain the belief that their unique connection as a small business is that they care more for the quality of the product and the service for the farmer. The way David sees it, this allows for a good rapport to develop and build on.
Having studied Mechanical Engineering in both Carlow IT and the University of Limerick, David worked as an engineer before taking the decision to go out on his own and work for himself in 2011. A year later, his own company was officially started and he hasn’t looked back since.
“We’re fully licensed since 2012 and would have two working here part-time at the moment,” said David.
“Basically, what we are is an animal feeds facility that produces the best quality products. We manufacture products which cater mainly for Dairy, Beef and Sheep animals.”
The roots of David’s interest in the agricultural industry go back to his grandfather, Frank Casey.
Back in the 1940s, Frank Casey had a thrashing mill around the Abbeyleix area, along with David’s father Declan they processed grain in the locality then they also rolled and sold barley to local farmers.
David has brought the tradition into the next phase and set-up a computerised mixing and milling operation in Abbeyleix that converts grain into nutrient balanced animal compound feed.
Frank started a grain mill of his own – one of the first in Republic of Ireland at the time, according to David, and his grandson accepts: “I guess you could say I’m following in his footsteps now a bit.”
He continued: “I studied Mechanical Enigneering in CIT and UL and I was working as a stockist for other mills up until 2012. I started out on my own then and my goal was to add value to grain and try and build the business from that because I knew there was an opening there.”
From that day onwards, the company has grown from strength to strength in the space of four short years.
AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd are also on the ground and can manufacture formulations that are required quick and easy. The main ingredients they use are Rolled Barely, Rolled Wheat, Rolled Oats and Flake Maize, which are used to achieve high energy diets.
While the main aspect of the business is animal feeds, they also stock a full range of animal minerals, grass seed and mineral buckets and no cheap alternative filler ingredients with low feed value are used.
AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd also supplies Actisaf Yeast, which improves the overall performance of ruminant animals and reduces the chances of acidosis in high intake diets.
In order to help improve the ration they have, AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd has constructed a grain conditioning plant. The conditioning plant cleans, screens and conditions the cereal grain to a consistent specification and achieves an improved textured ration.
This solves the problem of whole barley in rations and allows for a much flatter grain roll, increased digestion in rumen, reduce risk of acidosis and better presentation in rations. This is one of the reasons why they went to the trouble of erecting their own condition plant.
“The business is expanding all the time and we’re here six days a week,” explained the Managing Director.
“We built a grain conditioning plant and it was entirely constructed in house. It took two around two months to build and the benefits of it are consistency in the grain’s quality with less dust particles floating about. It also allows for increasing weight gain in animals, improving profits for our customers.”
There is also a bagging plant, which David expanded on:
“All our rations are always made to order, allowing our rations to be the freshest when delivered to the end customer. This we believe is one of our major advantages as no deterioration has occurred,” he stated.
The weight gain plays a significant part for David’s company and is a one of the reasons why he went to the trouble of erecting his own conditioning plant. This all leads to increased weight gain and increased profit for the farmer (ie the customer).
At the moment, AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd are currently selling in bulk, with bags of 500kg on offer and they can currently blow meal into bins as well. They also recently installed a 25kg bag that allows smaller quantities of product to be sold, such as Whole Barley, Flaked Maize, Whole Wheat and all of the compound rations.
So how is business at the moment? David enthusiastically explained to us:
“Business is on the up. At the moment, we’re increasing our customer base all the time through our quality, value and service,” he explained.
Starting up his company in the middle of a stinging economic downturn didn’t discourage David either. The way he looked at it, there was no better time to start.
“The best time to start a business is in a recession, between cheaper labour and looking ahead to the good times you can’t really ask for more. So started up and I’m glad I did because I haven’t looked back since,” he beamed.
As for the customers which have supported him from the start, David explained that many of them would be local farmers based in Abbeyleix, where his company is based – closed to the town’s well-known golf course.
“They are all mostly local and they you’d have a few from Portlaoise,” David stated.
“We feel we are top for quality but always have room for improvement and are always on the lookout for new innovative ways of improving our product.
“There’s no doubt about that and our motto here would be: ‘quality, value and service’ – those are the three things that matter most to us here, because we know that they are crucial to the customer as well.”
Going by that motto, it’s clear that David did his research into customer wants before setting up the company.
Sound delivery of his product is another vital part of gaining repeat business for David, so he has made sure that AbbeyGold Feeds take care of their clients in that department as well.
“We have a full range of delivery options available and our meal can be also collected from our yard,” he outlined.
“We have a tipper trailer here to help us with deliveries and most of the bags that we supply are half-tonne bags, as I said, so they’d be loaded for the customer.
“We are coming into our busiest time of the year now when the frost is on the ground. We also supply grass seeds and a full range of minerals. We’ve a grain conditioning unit as well which helps us to achieve consistent grain quality.”
The AbbeyGold Feeds Ltd store is open from 9am to 6pm from Monday through Saturday and orders can be placed with David (see mobile number below), so do not hesitate to contact him anytime.
You can check get information on the company’s latest stock and offers on Facebook – www.facebook.com/abbeygoldfeeds/
AbbeyGold Feeds
Address: Tullyroe,
Abbeyleix, Co Laois
Mob: 086 8353304
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 1, January 2016
