McArthur Agriculture
Belief in people & the
personal touch get results
Ian Wilkinson meets the McArthur team at Flixborough
» » BELIEF IN PEOPLE AND THE
personal touch has helped
McArthur Agriculture become
one of the UK’s leading grain
drying experts. I recently
visited John, Stewart and
Scott McArthur at their
factory in Flixborough, near
Scunthorpe.
The present factory is on
the actual site of the 1974
Flixborough disaster when
the NYPRO chemical plant
exploded with devastating
effect that could be heard thirty
miles away. The rebuilt plant
was subsequently closed in
1981.
McArthur’s moved here
in 2015, but the origins of
McArthur’s began way back
in 1995. At that time, father
Stewart was running their 120
acre arable and cattle farm at
Gunthorpe, near Doncaster.
Having seen the need for
diversification and spotting
a gap in the market for grain
drying, he got involved with
another company but that
didn’t work. During that time,
however, he had met Giovanni
Marcolongo, owner and
engineer at Italian grain drier
manufacturer, Mecmar. He
bumped into him again at the
Paris show. Giovanni invited
Stewart for a cup of coffee and
told him that he was looking for
an agent in the UK, but up to
now he hadn’t found the right
62 Spring 2017 www.farmers-mart.co.uk
company. He was impressed
at how Stewart looked after
people so McArthur became
and have since been, Mecmar’s
sole agent in the UK and
Ireland. Giovanni is still 100%
hands on with the Mecmar
business with an unflinching
“Can Do “approach. This proves
invaluable, as Mecmar is always
willing to adapt, develop and try
new ideas and improvements,
which is another reason
McArthur is able to deliver
such superior service to its
customers.
In the early days, farmers
were surprised at the size of
operation, all run from modest
farm buildings at Gunthorpe.
Stewart had steadily converted
many of the farm buildings into
workshops to accommodate
as many machines as possible
coming up to harvest – right up
to the point when his wife said,
“No more, you can’t take any
more garden!”
As Stewart says, “You don’t
need fancy buildings if you
have good people. Belief
in farmers has always been
our ethos, and it reflects in
everyone who works here.
For us, people are key. The
products we sell are only half
of the story; we’re the other
half. We don’t sell machines,
we solve problems and you
can only do that if you listen
to farmers. Being farmers
ourselves, we knew the
problems, so we wanted to put
the drier in the right place for
them, so that the grain could
flow.”
In the early 2000s, Stewart
still had a lot of cattle on the
farm, and looking after them
with early starts and late
finishes, then having to travel
all over the country to see
farmers about grain driers.
was a punishing way of life. So
when foot and mouth disease
happened, and he wasn’t
allowed to bring in any new
cattle to replace the ones that
had been fattened off, an ideal
opportunity presented itself
to step up the grain drying
business.
Stewart then did something
no-one had seen before. He