319 Ballard Rd, Gordonton
info@gavins.co.nz
07 824 3519
319 Ballard Rd, Gordonton
info@gavins.co.nz
07 824 3519
Further north and the thirty year old son of a Waikato sheep farmer was about to embark on a career which would prove to transform agricultural cropping in New Zealand.
Ian Gavin was destined for a lifetime of dagging ewes, on the family farm in Te Uku. His Dad was a pioneer of rotational grazing in the 50’s and had built up a successful operation fattening lambs but shearing and drenching wasn’t for Ian. His real passion was growing crops.
Ian Gavin and his wife Helen had been experimenting with maize on their home block in Te Uku when Ian felt the winds of change. The young couple came under local pressure to lend their knowledge, skills and work ethic on neighbouring farms and pretty soon the GAVINS began hiring to keep up with demand. Their first employee Ron was contracted for 3 weeks over the peak of the first season and 43 years on he’s never left.
“That first season was testing.” says founder Ian Gavin. “Contracting back then was not as we know it today and we were at the mercy of the elements to a far greater degree”. In their very first commercial season, GAVINS crops were hit first by frost, second by a freak tornado and coming in a close third was the bank.
“A few early contractors hit the wall in the late 70’s as we were starting out but we could see the lift in popularity of maize and silage in the district so we doubled down, pulled together everything we could and got to work. Ultimately it was the growth of the maize and silage business at the time that saw the business bloom.”
With a thriving business in maize and silage it was time to branch out. Barley and raspberries were next and the GAVINS, with their growing family at home and in the business saw phenomenal growth in those early years. Though their fortunes were about to take a bizarre twist.
In 1981 after a bumper harvest Ian was looking forward to a healthy cheque at the pre-agreed price when the grain merchant offered Ian only half. This made Ian think. Then act. Ian cancelled the contract and instead of calling his lawyers for retribution he called an English manufacturer and imported a state-of-the-art grain drier. Out of that challenging time the GAVINS stockfeed business was born.
For anyone who has pondered the origins of their morning cereal as they head for the shed at 4:30am spare a thought for GAVINS ingenuity. Ian received a panic call from the Sanitarium operations manager who was under pressure to deliver ever increasing volumes of the nations favourite breakfast flake to supermarket shelves. Ian saw an opportunity to pivot and support a national breakfast food brand.
With supply tapped out from the Gisborne area the trick to supplying Sanitarium was in the age old art of ‘cribbing’ maize. Ian saw the opportunity and set about developing an automatic cribbing machine and in doing so changed the course of history for the Waikato cropping scene. Previously dried on the cob and cribbed by hand the mechanisation of the process enabled GAVINS to become incredibly competitive and corner the cornflake market.
Two years before the arrival of Google, researching US best practices was an onerous undertaking but Ian’s perseverance paid off not just for GAVINS but for all GAVINS customers. In 1996 GAVINS pioneered 20 inch row planting believing the potential for increased yield would make the investment in time and plant “Worth a Go. “We trialed the practice of 20 inch planting against the traditional 30 inch for a number of years” says Ian.
“We were achieving 100% successful replications and knew we were onto something. Over a 29 tonne harvest our 20 inch crops yielded an average 7% additional yield.”
The success meant better gains for GAVINS clients and thousands of hours more work for GAVINS team every year in planting, spraying and harvesting but both Ian and son James believe the additional yield is worth the extra effort and has brought clients a lot closer to the GAVINS brand as a result. “Our loyal customers have experienced the additional gains for two decades now” says James Gavin. “While it has become the new normal for both us and our customers, we are regularly reminded that it makes a positive difference to their on farm operation and bottom line.”
A further example of GAVINS forward thinking is the early adoption of auto-covers on their fleet of grain cartage trucks. No longer do drivers spend hours per day manually covering their load, instead they gain on average two loads per day which in turn means GAVINS is on to the next job faster, servicing more of their customers on time causing fewer delays to on farm operations.
“Examples like this demonstrate that GAVINS is constantly refining its offering in terms of value and efficiency” says James. “We are a farmer first business and every decision we make is to give an advantage to our loyal customers.”
GAVINS relentless investment in R&D is ingrained in the business and serves to provide customers with an ever evolving, ever improving service. Ian and son James had the foresight to engage a dedicated research and development lead in 2010 resulting in a slew of advancements.
First was drying and blending highly effective stock feeds in-house in 2012, next came the creation of a Goat herd in-house to test for the optimum nutritional blend for the incredibly smell-sensitive herd and more recently a return to the early days of Ian’s raspberry crops with a protected cropping operation.
These innovations are all for a documented purpose explains James Gavin. “Our business model is to invest heavily in proving competitive advantages with our own operation first then extend the findings to our customers” says James. “We would lose our customers trust pretty quickly if we recommended an unproven process or product into a working environment.”
The GAVINS brand of business revolves around family values and extends to customers, partners and suppliers. With the hard work and goodwill of over 40 years in agricultural contracting Ian, son James and their dedicated team have achieved many milestones and enjoyed the journey with generations of customers. That sense of loyalty is a trait that the GAVINS family hold dear and put enormous value on.
“The future of farming looks to be just as challenging and exciting as the past 40 years” says Ian Gavin. “Our passion is to support our customers with knowledge, experience, innovation and commitment to hard work and excellence into the next four decades.”
Every business has it’s back story and the GAVINS family brand is no different. Ian recollects the loss of half his crops to massive frost damage in his foundation year and the heart stopping moment when his grain merchant halved his income for the season but when asked of the highlights Ian had this to say.
“Honestly, we couldn’t have done this without good people,” says Ian. “It’s been a privilege and a joy to walk the journey with some very good people in our staff, our customers and our suppliers.”
“I find there is nothing worse when I hear that someone is about to leave, I feel gutted that I’ve failed them,” Ian goes on to say. “But what’s amazing is the number who come back, the grass is seldom greener.”
