Peak milking 1150 cows on a milking platform of 260ha, the Tikorangi operation has grown steadily since Gavin Faull took over management in 1990 of the then 40ha property. The Faull family has farmed in the area since 1867 and Gavin, one of five brothers, took up the reins as managing director and majority shareholder. He’s never been a hands-on farmer. An accountant by trade, he owns and operates Swiss-Belhotel International, a company managing more than 125 hotels and projects worldwide.
But strategic growth of the farming business has been a passion. Though not living on farm, Gavin and more recently his son, Oliver, are actively involved from their base in Auckland.
“We manage the farm and the sharemilker operates the farm – we take an interest every day,” Gavin says.
With the development of “cloud” computer technology – programmes and applications hosted on a server accessible anywhere through an internet connection – the Faulls are able to engage with the farming business more easily.
Accounting software Xero and farm information management platform AgHub are the key data gateways in the cloud. Integrating AgHub has been a recent development and the Faulls are both excited about the potential for the programme to drive gains in efficiency and productivity.
Both the Faulls and the Penwardens like to question business-as-usual and are unafraid to adopt technology. For example, the 60-bail Dairymaster rotary commissioned in 2007 was the first of its type in the southern hemisphere.
The existing 29-aside herringbone dairy was proving to be a bottleneck as the farming business grew. Neighbouring land was being acquired and integrated, resulting in more cows being milked through the facility and marathon-like milking times.
Gavin saw the bottleneck as an opportunity to grow the business. On the checklist for the new milking facility was the desire to optimise milk production through information gathering and in-dairy feeding but not have too much complexity at the individual bail level. He wanted a fully integrated system and on advice went to Ireland to check out Dairymaster in their natural habitat.
He signed up on the spot and the plant was shipped to New Zealand in two containers.
As well as the Dairymaster plant, the dairy has a meeting/viewing room overlooking the rotary platform, separated from the milking facility by two large sliding panes of glass.
The facility – including the glass – is kept immaculately clean, no mean feat in a working farm dairy but cleaning reinforcements are kept on-call. Visiting groups often pass through and at one stage the farm made it into a Lonely Planet travel guide as a visitor attraction.
A desire to build a truly inter-generational business is one of the key drivers for the Faulls, but a close second would have to be an approach best described by the business term “kaizen” – a process of continuous improvement. Best practice becomes business as usual while ideas for further improvement are generated and incorporated, becoming the new business as usual.
Neither the Penwardens nor the Faulls are the type to rest on their laurels.
“I travel the world every week – that drives my vision,” Gavin says.
“When I see how they do farming in the Middle East, these huge operations really drive it. I have looked at dairy farms in India, China – it gets the brain thinking.”
Oliver says this sort of approach often means they are the first to try something.
“There is not necessarily anything to copy and gain efficiencies that way. Often we are towards the leading edge of it and sometimes that presents its own challenges. Solutions are not as obvious as they are when it becomes more mainstream.”
But he’s certain of what drives success for the business.
“It comes back to good people who are committed to the job.”
