The Farmers Mart Oct-Nov 2019 - Issue 65

42 RUSSELLS HALLMARK OCT/NOV 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk GRAND ECO DESIGN LAUNCHES THE RUSSELL GROUP’S NEW CUBLEY DEPOT THE 22nd and 23rd of October heralded the opening of The Russell Group’s latest future-proofing development for the business, their all new Cubley Depot in Ashbourne Road, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. It is an amazing state of the art, purpose-de- signed, fully energy efficient eco-friendly building covering 32,000 square feet along with a 4,000 square feet second floor. This is a ground-breaking design for an agricul- tural dealership. It is the culmination of more than three years hard work, planning and construction. I spoke with Jim Nash, Dealer Principal at Cubley. This is a momentous day for Jim as it’s almost 24 years to the day since Hallmark Tractors opened their highly suc- cessful Cubley depot which is just across from the new depot. Jim was equally proud to have his father Eddie at the opening, who is one of the original Hallmark founders. Eddie cut the ribbon flanked by Paul Russell (head of the Russell’s Group), Jim (Dealer Principal) and Pat Smith (New Holland, Business Director UK). Hallmark Tractors was originally started in 1963 in Ashby by the Hall Family. Jim’s father Eddie joined them in 1965. Talk about history repeating itself, Hallmark then built a 16,000 square feet single span depot in Ashby which was the largest single span building for an agricultural dealership at that time. Further depots were opened - 1982 Lichfield, 1984/5 South Kilworth, then Cubley in 1995. South Kilworth was closed in the 90’s to focus on the more profitable depots, Cubley and Lichfield. Alongside the agricultural deal- ership, they also built a very successful turbine business. This continued until the Government changed all the tariffs, which meant that side of the business wasn’t nearly as viable, so it was closed. Eddie retired in 2000 and in 2015 the Hall brothers decided they wanted to sell their part of the business. At that time, Russell’s were looking to expand their business, both in size and geography and their attention was directed to Hallmark, as for the size of depot, particularly Cubley, it was outperforming other larger New Holland dealerships. Jim and Eddie had always had a mind to expand and had looked at the “Big Field” next to Cubley. Given the quality of the Hallmark business and Russell’s expansion plans Hallmark was an ideal fit, particularly as Jim was keen to stay with the business once sold. So, in January 2016 Russell’s acquired HALLMARK. Readers of Farmers Mart will remember the launch at Donnington Park that we covered. Almost as soon as the acquisition was complete the planning process started for the new Cubley depot. Not only was Paul and Jim’s considerable experience invalua- ble in creating the new design -but many of the long serving staff were consulted about what an ideal design would look like. Planning was a fair hurdle to overcome as you can imagine, it being a com- plete greenfield site with no mains gas.

The Farmers Mart Oct-Nov 2019 - Issue 65 | Page 42