NZ Dairy Summer 2022

74 | nzdairy Bulk cartage and spreading of fertiliser is one of the many services supplied by BlueGras Contracting. DAIRY SERVICES » BlueGrass Contracting GREATER WAIKATO FRANKLIN • AUCKLAND EMERGENCY 24•7 MOBILE CONNECTORS ON-SITE CONTAINER WORKSHOPS OEM SUPPORT “At the end of the day it’s pretty good to have a good business now, but it’s hard work and you’ve got to make sure that you grow (the business) with your workload rather than trying to grow before the work. “We’ve worked our gear very hard all the way through. Our tractors pretty well average 1500 hours a year.” Following the addition of the hedge cutter, a loader wagon was added to the stable and a silage service was born. When two large Waikato agricultural contractors went out of business in the same week, maize harvesting was added, and Bluegrass Contracting was subsequently established in 2003. Brook and the Bluegrass Contracting team are very proud of the fact that they are the preferred contractor for some large corporates such as Southern Pastures, Pamu and Fonterra. At an administration level, Bluegrass Contracting is supported by two operations managers and Kerry Ann who handles a wide variety of tasks. The company’s relationship with Fonterra led to a bio-solids waste management service being established. “We do between 30 and 40,000 tonne of that a year. We’ve got over 120 customers that take that.” While silage and lucerne is core to the business, this plus other services which include farm race and feed supplement solutions, has enabled BlueGrass to provide consistency of work throughout the year. “The problem with silage is if it’s a bad year and the grass doesn’t grow, or the maize tonnage is down, we wanted to diversify so that we were a 12 months of the year business.” “We’ve now got our own resource consent so we can spread any products out of a factory that can ‘You’ve got to put in the hard yards’ • from page 72 be spread to land we are certi ed to do that.” As a result, four to six staff members are engaged in this part of the business year round. Regardless of the type of operation, trust based on fostering positive, long term relationships with both clients and staff while maintaining a high standard of work is paramount. “We’ve always tried to have a point of difference, and to be the best at what we do is what we try to achieve. “The problem with silage is if it’s a bad year and the grass doesn’t grow, or the maize tonnage is down, we wanted to diversify so that we were a 12 months of the year business. We’ve now got our own resource consent so we can spread any products out of a factory that can be spread to land – we are certi ed to do that.”

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