XtraBlatt Issue 02-2020

INTERNATIONAL
FARM CONTRACTOR WILL MURPHY, GREAT BRITAIN
BIG BUSINESS
BIG BALES
Will Murphy runs a classic business up in the county of Suffolk,
Great Britain. His concept is baling straw with two Krone HDP
machines packing a good 30,000 bales per season. A great
reason for a visit from Bernd Feuerborn, journalist with
agrarheute magazine.
The business base is hard to find, nestling somewhere
way out in the British countryside. Narrow lanes lead
to the farm – fields as far as the eye can see. In the yard
stands a corrugated iron barn with an office container
settled in front. Alongside the barn await two Krone large
square balers, ready for action. One, a BiG Pack 1290 HDP
High Speed and the other a BiG Pack HDP II. The HDP High
Speed was a season old, the HDP almost new, when we
visited contractor WRM Agri Ltd in summer.
firm that bought straw as power station fuel. In the electricity
plant straw was mixed with wood chips before firing the
boilers to produce 44 MW, enough for 82,000 households.
Each year, 240,000 t straw were needed for this purpose,
with the plant now in its fourth year of full operation. This
is where Will saw his chance as a self-employed supplier of
straw. In fact, there are four such biomass electricity works
in the region with a total straw requirement of 1 m t.
Will Murphy started off small scale. He asked the manager of
a 2,400 ha farm if he could buy and bale 80 ha straw. Because
the manager was at the time not so happy with his present
contractor, he ended up being offered 400 ha for baling.
He grabbed the opportunity and impressed everyone with
prompt service and clean baling work. Nowadays, he bales
straw on the whole farm and has secured baling contracts
for a further 1,600 ha in the region.
The business with the straw is quite a simple one in this area.
The farmers sell their straw from the field to the contractor.
Thereby barley, wheat and – amazingly – rapeseed straw are
all baled. As soon as the combine is finished, Will enters the
field with his baling team. Because he’s expected to clear
the stubble quickly, work capacity is important. After all, the
complete risk lies with the contractor. Payment is by weight.
All bales are recorded and traceable to field of origin. The
contractor gets his cash on delivery of straw to the power
station storage barns. Here, every bale is weighed.
TWO HDP BALERS
Three years into the business, Will Murphy’s labour force
had reached six seasonal workers employed for up to 10
weeks from July to September. However, the main work
is completed – weather and harvest permitting – usually
within six weeks. The contractor has a clear vision of how the
season’s business should go. The most important machines
in this respect are the balers, a reason why the Krone balers
are new or almost new.
The only bale size he wanted was 120 x 90 cm and he likes
density as high as possible, which in turn minimises straw
transport costs. This is why the 1290 HDP High Speed joined
the fleet in 2018. With this machine the contractor takes a
further precautionary step and has the baler serviced by
the local Krone dealership and has bought an extended
guarantee for the machine. “The capacity for enormous
straw density in the bales, but also the good service supplied
by the Krone dealership, were decisive factors for my purchase”,
says Will Murphy. The baler is powered by a Massey
Ferguson (MF 8670) 2012 model with 3,300 hours on the
clock. “With the tractors I’m always on the lookout for good
used machines, older but with low hours.” With its 320 HP,
the present MF has the required power for the HDP baler.
Things were different in the beginning with a Xenon 3800,
already 12 years old, running in front of the HDP II. It came
into the business with 2,500 h. This baler needs more than
380 HP on-hand in order to achieve full output, reckons Will
Murphy. For this reason, he’s added another 40 HP with chip
tuning. It seems there’s no problem in this respect with the
road authorities in Britain or road vehicle insurance.
Both tractors are fitted up-front with Agriweld swath rollers.
In this region the combines are working with 6 to 12 m
cutterbars and with the roll pressure on the big swaths, it’s
reckoned that the baler can work at up to 4 km/h faster. We
would have liked to have seen this proved in action.
Will Murphy founded his contractor firm in 2016 as 27-yearold
seeking the independence of self-employment. Beforehand,
he’d worked a couple of years in the straw trade for a
The two Krone balers run by
Will Murphy together manage
to produce up to 30,000 bales
per season.
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