Northern Ireland machinery maker Quad-X may have made its name with equipment to go behind ATVs, but it’s tractor-mounted kit where much of the new demand is coming from. David Cousins explains

Big – or even medium-sized – British manufacturers aren’t exactly thick on the ground these days. But there are good numbers of small manufacturers around the UK – often with a farm business in the background – making well-designed and strongly made equipment.

Quad-X is a good example of the genre. Owner Sean Blaney, based on a small livestock farm near Ballymena in Co Antrim, started the company in 1993.

The first ventures, funded by a student loan, were repairing ATVs and making home-built off-road buggies with Mini engines. But that soon gave way to selling Suzuki ATVs and making his own range of four-stroke quad bikes.

But when cheap, Chinese-made ATVs started flooding the UK market in 2004, he knew that he had to change tack. The path he chose to head down was designing and making attachments for the growing numbers of ATVs being used by UK farmers.

Fast-forward nine years and Quad-X has built up its product portfolio to more than 100 attachments, which are sold to more than 16 countries. These include sprayers, weed-wipers, trailers, mowers, fertiliser spreaders, muckspreaders, snow ploughs and even farm buggy cabs.

Unexpected directions

But consumer demand – or, rather, simply asking farmers what machines they’d like that currently don’t exist – can often lead you in unexpected directions. And, popular though these products were, Mr Blaney began to get lots of requests from farmers for full-sized, tractor-mounted versions of them.

So the company responded with new ranges of tractor-mounted equipment, including full-size mowers and shredders, three models of hedgecutters, aerators, mounted sprayers, straw shredders, round bale feeders, cubicle bedders, poultry bedders, trailers and even log splitters. A range of mounted sprayers is in the pipeline, too.

Sales of these tractor-mounted products have been good, says Mr Blaney, and now account for 10% of all sales. Moreover, farmer customers keep coming up with new ideas for machines that aren’t currently offered by existing manufacturers.

The company has also recently decided to split its ATV and tractor machinery into two divisions. ATV kit will continue to be sold under the Quad-X name, while tractor-mounted equipment will go under the Blaney Agri-Solutions name.

Manufacturing and distribution

Having a wide range of models may be appealing to customers, but it can make the logistics of manufacturing quite tricky. Some 17 staff currently work out of a set of airy ag-spec Dutch barns, but the coming months will see a new 3,000sq ft being built just down the road. Robotic welders and other high-tech manufacturing equipment is also envisaged.

Currently there are 40 dealers selling the equipment in the UK, but the company is keen to have specialist dealers who can explain the equipment to farmers.

Shredder/bedder

Blaney/Quad-X has had a tractor-mounted bale shredder/feeder for a while. It can shred a round bale in two-and-a-half minutes and has two discharge chutes, one for straw and one for silage. Loading the bale currently has to be done with a separate tractor loader but a new option being worked on will allow the shredder/feeder to lift up a bale under its own steam and load it into the hopper. A couple of rival machines on the market can also self load, says the company, but the Quad-X system looks a particularly neat one.

Weed wiper

Weed wipers are definitely moving into the big league. Blaney’s latest tractor-mounted machines come in widths that range from a single-section 3m machine to a massive triple-section 8.7m version. The wider sizes have been prompted by demand from dairy farmers wanting to sort out thistles, docks and nettles in fields for grazing. All have the company’s novel weed detection system, which uses a sensor at the front of the machine to only apply herbicide when weeds are actually spotted.