Which UK company sells the most farm trailers? Where do vegetable handling machinery manufacturers rank among equipment producers? And which are looking to expand by investing in their manufacturing facilities?

The answers are all here among the largest businesses – with the exception of one company that modestly asked not to be included – producing agricultural machinery and equipment in the UK.

All turnover figures are for a 12-month period, mostly to the end of 2019 and all before any effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

See also: Ranked: Europe’s biggest farm equipment manufacturers

£840m JCB

As a manufacturer of big-ticket agricultural machines, JCB is the largest UK-based supplier of farm equipment.

The group’s agricultural sales are understood to account for about 20% of turnover, which equates to £840m of the £4.2bn total generated in 2019. Among the company’s exports, more than 60% of Fastrac sales are in markets such as France and Germany, central Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Loadall telescopic handlers are built in its world headquarters facility at Rocester, with JCB engines and cabs from nearby plants, and transmissions from Wrexham, north Wales. Fastracs are built alongside wheeled loaders at Cheadle, where a separate factory produces the compact loaders and telehandlers.

£103.2m Ifor Williams Trailers

With 570 employees and four advanced manufacturing sites, including the headquarters at Corwen, Denbighshire, Ifor Williams Trailers builds a range of products for transportation of livestock, horses, machinery and vehicles.

Roughly 25% of total sales are generated outside the UK via distributors in 24 countries, including Ifor Williams subsidiaries operating in France, the Benelux countries and Portugal.

In the company’s financial year to March 2020, more than 80% of turnover was generated from the UK and EU, with the rest coming from exports further afield.

£52.1m F Klucznik & Son/IAE

At a purpose-built facility in north Staffordshire, the IAE fabrication business, which employs about 490 people, uses automated production techniques to make an extensive range of standard and bespoke products sold throughout Europe and the rest of the world, as well as the UK.

Agricultural equipment including field gates, troughs, feed barriers, cow cubicles and cattle crushes account for approximately 75% of turnover, with the rest coming from rights-of-way gates, industrial fencing, horse stables and shelters for people and bicycles.

The business, owned and run by the Klucznik family, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019 by starting construction on a 5ha plot adjacent to the existing 10.2ha site at Stoke-on-Trent.

This £15m investment will house a fully automated powder coat painting plant, an additional manufacturing facility and an indoor training and demonstration centre.

£44.3m Fullwood

The UK’s only manufacturer of milking equipment continues to make headway as part of the Fullwood Packo Dairy Group, owned since 2015 by the Pindustry investment arm of Verder Group in the Netherlands.

The Fullwood Group, which includes subsidiaries in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and Czech Republic, has some 210 employees and at its base in Ellesmere, Shropshire, builds conventional and robotic milking machinery and parlours.

It also supplies cooling equipment manufactured by Packo in the Netherlands and herd management and other systems developed in partnership with Israel’s AfiMilk for the group’s 50,000 or so dairy farm customers.

£42.4m McConnel

With strong UK sales, and exports that account for more than 37% of turnover, McConnel is the largest of several British companies owned by US-based Alamo Group, including Bomford Turner and Spearhead Machinery. Together, they generated turnover of more than £67m in 2019.

McConnel employs 195 people, with operations building Power Arms (and Twose-branded reach mowers) for hedge and verge mowing in Ludlow, Shropshire. Other vegetation control products are manufactured in Alamo Group facilities in Worcestershire, where a further 188 people are employed.

The product range has been diversified in recent years to include remote-controlled Robocut flail mowers and Agribuggy self-propelled spraying/spreading vehicles.

£25.7m Shelbourne Reynolds Engineering

Manufacturing and assembly facilities on the 2ha site near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which Shelbourne Reynolds has occupied since 1972, have progressively expanded and another investment project is in the pipeline to provide additional assembly space.

Turnover grew by 22% in 2019 as global sales increased of the company’s hedgecutters, flail mowers, vertical diet feeders, side-discharge manure spreaders and harvesting equipment, which includes the unique Stripper combine header, pick-up headers and header trailers.

The company, ultimately owned by a private investment trust, has some 150 employees in the UK and a US subsidiary in Kansas. It will soon celebrate 50 years in business.

£22.2m Haith Group

The majority of Haith Group’s consolidated turnover – £19.8m – is generated by Tickhill Engineering, the manufacturer of Haith vegetable handling and processing equipment for the past 70 years, which occupies modern manufacturing facilities at Armthorpe, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

The company, with its 85 employees, has a strong following for its specialist products in the UK, which accounted for 80% of turnover in 2019. Markets beyond Europe also gained importance by contributing 15% of turnover, up from just 2%.

Since 2015, turnover at the Haith family-owned and run business has grown from just over £9m, spurred on by customers winning contracts for large turnkey projects; a recent collaboration agreement with Grimme UK enables buyers to access both companies’ products from their chosen outlet.

£21.4m Weaving Machinery

While continuing to import several product lines, Weaving Machinery, with its 50 employees, has become firmly established as a manufacturer in its own right, with seed drills and cultivators now accounting for about 70% of turnover.

Revenues are generated roughly 70:30 in the UK and from export markets, with domestic sales buoyed by a shift towards direct-drilling technologies.

New product development and improvement have been supported recently by significant investment in expanded manufacturing and assembly space at the family-run company’s rural premises near Evesham, Worcestershire. Further expansion is in the pipeline to provide a bespoke office block and showroom.

£18.8m Bailey Trailers

Since building its first farm trailer a little less than 40 years ago, the family-owned Bailey Trailers business, which employs close to 100 people, has become the UK’s largest agricultural trailer manufacturer. It now produces more than 1,000 units/year at its premises in Sleaford, Lincolnshire.

These are partially built using a new robotic welding installation as the company continues to invest in resources. Earlier this year, the machine shop and parts department moved into a new building to accommodate further expansion plans for the company’s extensive range.

The fuel and water bowsers, flatbeds, dropsides, high-lifts, people carriers and ejector models, in addition to traditional silage and root crop trailers, are sold mainly in the UK, but export shipments typically worth £1m/year go overseas, largely to Scandinavian countries and New Zealand.

£18.3m Tong Engineering

Growing domestic and export sales to more than 50 countries have secured Tong’s position as a leading UK manufacturer of vegetable grading and handling equipment, with turnover up by 28% to January 2020.

Last autumn, the 170 employees of the Tong family-owned business moved into a £3.6m purpose-built factory on a new 2.8ha site in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and a second phase is due to be occupied later this year. This will complete a project to consolidate two separate manufacturing locations and provide 20% increased capacity.

UK sales account for about 65% of turnover, with customers in Europe and elsewhere credited with generating about 18% each.

£18.1m Teagle Machinery

More than 200 people, employed mainly at Teagle’s base near Truro, in Cornwall, manufacture the market-leading range of Tomahawk straw and forage shredding machines for livestock feeding and bedding.

Tomahawk numbers hit 20,000 units in 2019, the year after the Teagle family celebrated the 75th anniversary of its company. Turnover increased 30% to a new high in 2019, with the UK accounting for just over 50% as exports to Europe (35%) and beyond (12%) have grown.

The facility also produces rotary toppers, swath conditioners and simple fertiliser spinners, complemented by a selection of imported machines, as well as manure spreaders built in a dedicated 1,250sq m hall completed in 2014.

£17.2m NC Engineering

At its 3.2ha base in Hamiltownsbawn, County Armagh, NC Engineering builds slurry tankers, pumps and sweepers, agricultural and industrial dump and low-load trailers, and a comprehensive range of construction site dumpers.

The company, which employs more than 150 people, saw 2019 revenues dip from a recent high of £18.8m as sales to Australia, New Zealand and other export markets slowed and production of telescopic wheeled loaders ceased. But it was still the second best result for the company, with strong demand for the agricultural products in particular.

£14.2m David Ritchie Implements

Sales of livestock- and bale-handling equipment, weighing systems, gates and any number of related items have made Ritchie Agricultural the largest farm equipment manufacturer in Scotland.

The business has a wholly owned galvanising subsidiary in the company’s Forfar home town in Angus and a production and distribution facility in Willenhall, West Midlands.

Owned by the Ritchie family, the company celebrates its 150th anniversary this year and employs more than 130 people across the group, with all turnover generated in the UK and European countries.

£13.8m GT Bunning & Sons

Best known for its heavy-duty, high-capacity manure spreaders – including an export model that mashed up a car on BBC’s Top Gear – Norfolk-based GT Bunning has recently invested £4.5m to expand manufacturing facilities.

The 6,840sq m factory extension for spreader component manufacture and assembly also houses a state-of-the-art painting facility commissioned just recently. Across the group, Bunning employs more than 90 people.

In 2019, turnover reached a recent high, partly due to the acquisition of a local manufacturer of factory pallet handling equipment. About 60% of turnover is generated in the UK, 24% in export markets such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the US, and the rest in Europe.

£13.1m Bomford Turner

Vegetation control in agriculture, forestry and landscaping – and also for highways maintenance – is Bomford Turner’s speciality, along with the enduring ground-driven Dyna Drive twin tine-rotor cultivator.

The company is a key part of the US-based Alamo Group’s $352m (£256m) agricultural machinery business, with export sales to Ireland, France and other markets in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia accounting for about 56% of turnover.

Although the company employs only 20 staff, manufacturing operations for all Alamo Group companies at Salford Priors in Worcestershire employs a further 188 people, producing reach arm and linkage-mounted flail and rotary mowers.

£12.9m Alvan Blanch

Operating from its base on the Wilts/Glos border, Alvan Blanch is the UK’s largest manufacturer of post-harvest equipment and best known for grain driers and specialist drying technology for a wide range of crops and commodities.

Exports to more than 100 countries, recognised by three Queens Awards for Enterprise – International Trade, account for 80% of total sales, while investments over the past 10 years have expanded the factory area to 12,000sq m and brought in the latest automation and robotics technologies to increase capacity and improve productivity.

A new purpose-built finishing shop was completed in early 2021, too.

Turnover in 2019 was distorted when a large export order could not be shipped by year-end; sales in 2020 returned to the five-year average of more than £14.5m.

£12.5m Ploeger UK

The former PMC Harvesters business designs and assembles pea and bean harvesters for customers throughout Europe, South Africa and Australasia as part of the Dutch-American Ploeger Oxbo Group.

It also builds a self-propelled pollinating tassel remover used in seed crops of maize, with growing sales under the Oxbo name in Brazil, the US and parts of Europe.

Export sales generated 65% of turnover in 2019 and although the company employs just 45 people, many more jobs are supported by outsourcing component manufacturing for assembly at the Fakenham plant in Norfolk.

£11.9m LM Bateman & Co

Feeders, troughs, gates, cubicles and handling systems for cattle and sheep, as well as an extensive range of cattle crushes, are at the core of LM Bateman’s product range. Kit is manufactured at Cheddleton, near Leek, Staffordshire, by the family-run business, established in 1979.

In 2019, 88% of turnover was generated in the UK, with export sales achieved in more than 25 countries throughout Europe and beyond. Of the 140 people employed, most are located at the factory, where facilities include twin robots for automated welding of gates, a new dispatch area and additional land acquired for future expansion.

£11.6m Spearhead Machinery

The third key member of Alamo Group’s UK operations, Spearhead claims to be Europe’s leading supplier of large-area rotary mowers for stubble management and vegetation maintenance.

Based in Worcestershire, the company employs 14 people at the Alamo Group site where the range of linkage-mounted and reach flail mowers are engineered and built.

Distributors in Europe and Scandinavia support the company’s export sales, which accounted for 38% of turnover in 2019.

£11.5m Redrock Engineering

At its base in Collone, near Armagh, and a second factory an hour to the west at Fivemiletown, Redrock Machinery produces a range of livestock farm products.

These go from brush sweepers, grass forks, silage grabs and slurry pumps to vertical and horizontal feed mixers, trailers of all sorts, straw bale processors and slurry tankers.

The company has about 70 employees, with sales generated mostly in the UK and Ireland, but also through dealers in the Netherlands and France, and in Australia and the US.

£10.7m Househam Sprayers

Based in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, Househam designs and manufactures a diverse range of self-propelled sprayers.

A six-figure investment went into the site in 2018, increasing the factory footprint by 30% and production capacity by 50%, with double the number of assembly bays.

The 50-strong team of employees generate more than 70% of turnover in the UK, but the company’s willingness to produce bespoke solutions for spraying different crops has won export business from customers in the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine and elsewhere.

£10.4m Fleming Agri-Products

A £4m investment in a new 2,040sq m facility comprising a welding shop, state-of-the-art spray booth and finishing room for larger trailers and tankers has increased Fleming Agri’s production capacity at Newbuildings, near Londonderry.

Improved efficiency will help grow the company’s presence in the agricultural sector and support diversification into compact, municipal and equestrian equipment.

The 160-year old family-owned firm has 120 employees producing a range of grassland machinery, trailers, transport boxes, loader buckets and yard scrapers, with Ireland and the UK accounting for more than 95% of turnover, alongside exports to Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

£9.6m Standen Engineering

Although building sugar beet harvesters first brought the company to prominence, machinery for potatoes is now the key focus for Standen Engineering as it celebrates 175 years of UK manufacturing in 2021.

From the late 1990s, a potato equipment portfolio was assembled with the acquisition of KeyAg harvesters, Dowdeswell tillers and Pearson separators to complement Standen’s own planters, and these products continue to be built – together with Target Set ridge-injection technology – in Ely near Cambridge.

Employing just over 60 people, Standen’s manufactured products account for the bulk of turnover and targeting solutions for specialist crops – such as sweet potato harvesting in the US – has helped secure exports.