Bechlawn growing

Una Ni Bhroin (L) in Avoca

While now an established enterprise Beechlawn organic farm is very much growing too. The east Galway farm-based business, run by husband and wife team Padraig Fahy and Una Ni Bhroin, has grown before during and after the recession.

Oliver Moore: First up Una, tell me about the farm and business .You've managed to keep growing even through the tough times?

Una Ni Broin: Yes we've growing 22 acres of veg now, up from 20 last year and its grown really since we started on one acre in 2001. By 2007 we were growing five acres of veg with five polytunnels, a tractor and two vans. Since 2009 we've started to move away from farmers markets and more into supplying retailers. Currently, we employ a driver, veg packer, two horticultural staff, an office administrator, an apprentice and extra seasonal paid staff, while there are five work placement students here every summer.

OM: so do you supply individual shops or multiples?

UNB: We supply 30 shops this year including Joyces' Supermarkets, a number of Supervalu and Londis shops, and a good few in Cork actually. Quay coop in Cork have been great, and two Garden Goodness shops in Wilton and Douglas Court do well for us: Organic republic also buy from us at certain times of the year. All the while, we've maintained our box scheme too for local regulars.

OM: What are you growing?

UNB: The smaller stores take mixed pallets – we grow up to 30 veg in any one year - while the larger ones, in the Musgrave group, can just take a pallet of three veg – turnips, cabbage and leeks.

There is 20,000 sq foot of polytunnels here. To give you some examples, we grow over a tonne of salad leaves, half a tonne of chard, and 20 tonnes of leeks. There's over a tonne of purple sprouting broccolli too.

Purple sprouting broccoli and kale both really took off with customers about two years ago - though we had false starts with both of them! People are also buying our veg for juicing now too.

Some crops - such as tomatoes, French beans, and cucumber - can be challenging. They need a lot of attention and are susceptible to pests. You could loose up to a third of them, and something will always be a challenge each year. We didn't have the cash to pay someone to exclusively work on the tunnels last year. We might do that this year.

OM: Has there been a recent upswing, sales-wise?

UNB: I would say that there has been quite a pick up since about September. People started knocking on the door. Before that, it was harder to find new customers, we would ring five to get one or two who'd go for it, then only one would stay. Now, to a greater extent, we can set the price and call the terms.

Padraig Fahy in Ennistymon Supervalu

OM: Going from the size you were at to the size you are now is a step many horticulturalists don't take. What sort of help did you get?

UNB: We’d been selling to Galway Supervalus, when Padraig heard about Food Academy training. This is training for small new businesses, involving Bord Bia, the local enterprise boards and SuperValu. This will help us upscale to sell to more Musgrave run stores, provided we can organise the transport to do so.

Consumer Insight; Technical Advice; Resource Planning; Commercial Advice and Marketing Development are the areas Food Academy focuses on with clients. It is described as a programme to provide companies with long-term business supports. Six half day workshops are help, in the areas of customers, technical issues, growth.

Next, we find out about the final piece in the puzzle for the Beechlawn expansion: finance when the banks are barely lending.

While its exceedingly difficult to get loans from banks these days, Beechlawn went with the Linked Finance option. Here’s how it worked for them, in the words of Una Ni Bhroin (pictured)

“Linked Finance contacted us 3 times about a loan. We’d discuss it, but were worried as we were already in debt, so why take more on? They contacted us 3 years ago and 2 years ago, the second time we looked more seriously at it. We sent them accounts. The third time, Conor McAlese got in touch to say that he was passing. He popped in. We had a chat about what we would do were we to get funds in.

Conor couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful. It really felt like he had our interests at heart. We were initially worried about repayments, but we looked at the accounts together, and he felt that we’d be ok. We pay E633 per month on the E20,000 we got from the auction. He contacts us in advance of each payment just to let us make sure the cash is in there.

We gave him a list of our needs: a roller door for our new wash shed, new computer for office, new van for deliveries, new refrigeration for the new van also, as well as a motor door and insulation panels for our partly completed coldroom in our washshed.

We gave him a copy of our bank statements and other loan statements for the previous six months and we also got a credit clearance certificate.

In the end, we focused on the van, upgrading our warehouse and storage facilities, including the construction of a concrete bay to provide better access for trucks. We also plan to build an office above the washhouse with easy access for staff and customers. Our office is currently located in our home which is becoming a bit cramped!

We will also be putting in an additional coldroom in the washhouse to keep veg cool, and a steel roller door has just gone in. The final project we have is to make improvements and enhancements to our webshop.

Linked Finance ran an auction for us, whereby people could invest in our upgrade plans. The auction ran for 3 weeks. We were encouraged to keep an eye for, and respond to, queries via email about the auction, and in the Q&A section of our loan, as they were likely to be from interested potential investors.

Linked Finance gave lots of support, while we also promoted it on facebook, with family and fields; we contacted customers, suppliers and anyone we could about it really. Bids were from E50 up, lots came in at E100, and there were a few people who seemed to do this a lot, based on their profile activities.

Returns for bidders are higher than they would get from the bank as interest on savings. All lenders who supported the loan for €250 or more at 6.5% were offered a ten percent discount on veg boxes purchased in 2014.

We were well oversubscribed, to the tune of 175%, at an interest rate of 8.73%. About 275 people invested in us, lending for 36 months. We got the E20,000 less a completion fee of 500 - 2.5%. The loan can be settled early with zero penalty interest.”

So there you have it. There are other options beyond the banks for loans. Crowd funding has emerged as a genuine alternative for businesses, including organic food businesses.

More:
Beechlawn
Beechlawn 2008 on this blog
Linked Finance

That's our discussion regarding Bechlawn growing

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