Finding a niche market in budget-friendly equipment

Taking ‘Clon’ from Clonmel and ‘trac’ from tractor, brought about the formation of Clontrac, a company set up by Thomas O’Dea in his home town, initially offering a broad range of hedge cutting, mulching and timber processing equipment for the agricultural and ground care industries.

“Our customers are typically farmers and commercial customers like landscapers, tree surgeons etc, but we also sell a lot to private people typically with an acre or more who need some way of making maintenance work easier, Thomas outlined.

“Labour is in such short supply nowadays everywhere. What’s more, timber is generally difficult to handle and slow to process.” Therefore, Thomas set out to help automate the process involved and make life easier for farmers and those within the sector.

Clontrac are main dealers for the full range of Sunward excavators from 1-ton up to 21-tonne, the full range of Remet wood processing equipment, Fleming Agri products and the Captain range of compact tractors.

Clontrac also sells a large range of its own brand of attachments produced in its own factory in China. “I myself come from an engineering background, I studied civil engineering in CIT after which I spent a number of years working in London as an engineer, and this knowledge today helps with structural work and design,” explained Thomas.

It was while over in the UK that Thomas took an interest in buying machinery and shipping it back to Ireland.

In the early days, he explains how his business originated as he began by buying a lot of used Japanese compact tractors which sold very well for him back in Ireland, then he gradually built on this and began selling the new range of diggers, compact tractors and attachments that they have at their premises today.

“We have a factory in China which we have been working very closely with for almost ten years now; they build the machines to our specifications and are very quick to implement any modifications that we need for the Irish market as we like heavy-duty equipment here.”

They carry out careful quality control of the machines during fabrication and before shipping.

He says hindsight is a great thing as it has taken them a good number of years to find the right factory to work with and there have been a lot of costly mistakes along the way, but they are in a very good position now and the quality has improved massively since they started and continues to get even better with every year that passes as they constantly innovate and expand.

Quality components

“The factory has now implemented robotic welders for much of the welding process and are also using state-of-the-art plasma CNC machines for years; most recently we have been working to improve the painting procedure and finish.”

It’s only over the course of a number of years that you can evaluate what works well in a machine versus what does not and once we establish this, we work with the factory to implement a solution so that we do not have the issue again.”

He is very clear that for certain parts such as highly stressed pieces, they only use premium components from the best in the class like Italian-made CASAPPA hydraulic pumps and motors in their larger hedge cutters and Japanese-made NSK bearings.

For other components like hydraulic pipework, oil seals etc they aim to always use standard off the shelf parts so that down the line the machines can be maintained using parts readily available from any local agri supplier.

This gives customers great piece of mind that the machine they are buying can be used and maintained without issue well into the future. These hedge-cutting machines are now very good sellers for them with very little warranty issues.

“We use Hardox steel for many of the wearing parts of our timber machinery, for example, the tree shears we build for excavators.”

Another big advantage Thomas notes, was as they increased the product range and overall sales, they have regular shipments coming from the factory now, so they can quickly replace any consumable parts which they are running low on.

Burning Ban

“The bulk of what we supply is aimed at farmer level equipment and at an extremely competitive price point.” He explains that they achieve these extremely competitive prices by importing all machines directly from their factory in bulk, they take care of all shipping door to door, and Clontrac aims to sell in volume rather than holding out for a higher margin.

Many of their machines also fall under the TAMS scheme making them even more affordable for farmers.

Timber processing equipment Thomas says, now makes up a large part of their core business and they have an extremely successful agency with their Polish supplier Remet CNC. Clontrac sells the full range of Remet branch loggers and are seeing a huge increase in demand for these with the recent ban on burning.

Recent YouTube videos testing out one of Clontrac’s RP200 branch loggers has boosted sales even further with more videos planned soon to demonstrate the machine’s incredible throughput.

A route for those starting out

Thomas acknowledges that young people may aspire to getting into machinery like contracting but says realistically having a silage outfit on the road is a pipe dream for most as the initial investment is hundreds of thousands of euros.

“I was like every young lad one time and mad for the big fancy gear but luckily, I grew out of it”. He highlights that a decent output modern silage harvester alone will set you back a couple of hundred thousand euros not to mind diesel and maintenance.

“Our equipment does not have that kind of capital outlay and if a young person has that drive within them, then it isn’t impossible to start small and build a customer base and who knows what this will lead to in the future when they have built a bit of business experience and credit history.”

Clontrac also have a nice range of products for ATV users from mowers to spreaders and it’s another route to low-cost hire work.

Looking to the future Thomas is extremely positive as they have just received planning permission for a new 16000 sq/ft premises in Ard Gaoithe Business Park, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, this will include a warehouse, workshop and display area as well as offices.

This he explains will be a massive boost to the business as they are currently operating out of two premises due to lack of sufficient space in the original unit in Clonmel.

Once completed, the plan is to take on additional staff to help meet the growing demand for their products.

They are also working on the development of a new range of equipment for cutting under and behind electric fence wires and the new premises will open the possibility of beginning to manufacture this equipment in Clonmel.