Big commitment

Attending Fieldays is a huge commitment for any business. The months of planning required to deliver a quality product to thousands of people who pass through your site each day is essential and even more important when you’re one of New Zealand’s most successful agritech businesses like Gallagher.

Fortunately this year’s theme ‘Changing the Face of Farming’ offered us fantastic scope for the design of our site. This year we’re introducing new technology to farmers which will definitely change the way they operate – Electronic Identification, or EID technology makes the collection and reporting of electronic identification information as simple as possible. And because at Gallagher we’re always keen to hear about the customer’s experience with our solutions we’ve included an interactive display on site so visitors can play with the new products, ask plenty of questions and most importantly give us their honest feedback.

The logistics required to support our site for four days is another massive exercise. We bring in over 50 staff including NZ sales and rural dealers. The sales team started the week at head office with team meetings and training for the dealers working at Gallagher’s site so they’ll be keen to share their updated product knowledge with you. Over 40 years experience has also taught us that it’s not just about keeping the big kids entertained. We know it’s very important to make sure the little people have something to do while the shop talk takes place so we’ve introduced entertainment for young and old, including portraits produced by a resident caricature artist. There are always things you should never change on a site like the familiar orange stock sticks, on sale again with all funds raised going to the Waikato Westpac Helicopter Trust. Make sure you get yours early in the day as they’re great for herding the family, pointing out the features of the new tractor or just waving frantically in the air as you direct your Fieldays buddy on the cell-phone to your location in the middle of the crowd!
Anyway, welcome to day one – Let the hard work begin.

Mathew Macfie
Gallagher
Regional Manager – Animal Management