| 83 nzdairy Journey from farming to engineering Recent projects have included feed pad construction, a complete cow shed rebuild, chicken shed floors and concrete placing work. Karen Phelps When Matt Cover hung up his milking cups 20 years ago he couldn’t have imagined where his knack for fixing broken machinery would lead. On 5 October this year, the business he founded with his wife Kyla, Ag & Industrial Matamata, quietly marked two decades of serving the Matamata-Piako region’s agricultural community. “It’s just another day,” says Matt Cover with characteristic understatement. What began as a sole operator has expanded into a successful business employing ten staff members. But the journey from dairy farmer to engineering business owner wasn’t exactly planned. “As a dairy farmer I was good at breaking things, so you’ve got to get good at fixing things, and it kind of started from that,” explains Matt, who spent 15 years milking cows, working his way up to 50-50 sharemilking, before starting Ag & Industrial Matamata. Based at the fully equipped workshop on Lansdowne Road in Waharoa, Ag & Industrial Matamata has built its reputation on diversity. The company handles everything from routine machinery repairs to major construction projects, employing a builder, mechanic, fencer, concrete placer and steel-tying fabrication specialist on its team. Services span the full spectrum of agricultural and general engineering needs. The company constructs new farm buildings including cow sheds, calf sheds, hay barns, covered feed pads and implement sheds. It also handles industrial building construction and extensions. Concrete work encompasses feed bunkers, feed pads, silage pits and concrete panels. Additional services include farm machinery repairs and maintenance, pipework, gates, stainless feed trough installations and Protrak system installations, alongside industrial plant maintenance and transport and earthworks capabilities. “We’re kind of just a one-stop outfit - we can do just about whatever our customers need,” says Matt. Recent projects have included feed pad construction, a complete cow shed rebuild, chicken shed floors and concrete placing work. Proud Rural Supplier of Ag & Industrial Matamata Ltd Poles · Timber · Hardware&more The company also manufactures its own precast concrete panels. Perhaps most valuable to timepressed farmers is the mobile engineering service. Rather than requiring farmers to transport broken equipment to town, Ag & Industrial Matamata brings the workshop to them. “Everyone’s busy and they haven’t got time to run stuff into town to get stuff fixed,” explains Matt, DAIRY SERVICES » Ag & Industrial Matamata • to page 84 who keeps himself available to handle emergency breakdowns, saving his team from being pulled off scheduled jobs. About 85 per cent of the work remains dairy or farm-related, though the company has expanded into industrial projects. Currently, four staff members are working at Nu Age Plaster in Waharoa on a plant upgrade, with more work scheduled for January involving new mixers and material handling systems. The business has weathered the farming industry’s ups and downs with pragmatic resilience. “When the payout or prices are down, we’re still busy, because farmers can’t afford new stuff, so they have to fix their old stuff,” says Matt.
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