While juggling a range of customer demands, one large-scale farm contractor has made recycling and sustainability a priority in their full-service package, while maximising forage quality for themselves, and their customers.
Sam Bloye and wife Nicola have run contracting, haulage and farm plastic recycling business, Tamar Agri Ltd, for the past 15 years.
The family’s business harvests over 10,000 acres of forage crops each season, baling more than 12,000 round bales per year and 5,000 square bales.
The large enterprise offers year-round contracting services, covering cereal planting, spraying and harvest, to cultivations and umbilical slurry spreading.
All while Sam’s brother, Josh, looks after the business’ newly established, 200-cow dairy herd, alongside the 200 head of store cattle on the farm near Callington in Cornwall.
Despite the scale of the business, Tamar Agri has not lost sight of its responsibility to ensure it offers customers more sustainable on-farm solutions where possible.
Recycling on farm plastic
“We’ve run B&B Waste Recycling, the agricultural recycling contracting arm of the business, since 2005, which was started in response to a change in Waste Management Regulations,” explains Sam.
He says the business acts as the ‘middleman’ between the farmer and the recycling plant.
“The regulations banned the burning or burying of farm plastics, so we now collect plastic waste from farms across the South West and compact it into square waste bales, which are then purchased by a recycling plant.”
See how the upcoming change in regulations may affect you here: Changes to waste exemptions – what you need to know – NFUonline
Time for change
In 2014, the recycling plant used by the business stopped accepting net wrap due to the challenges and cost of cleaning it for recycling, prompting the family to reconsider their approach to baling and look for a more sustainable solution.
When the time came to replace their McHale Fusion 3 in 2022, Sam saw an opportunity to address the issue by investing in a Fusion 3 Plus, which uses net replacement film (NRF).
“We’d had customers enquire about using NRF, also known as film on film, but I’d been sceptical that the machines were ready for the job,” Sam admits.
“But after reassurance from Halse, our local McHale dealer, we were confident that the Fusion 3 Plus wouldn’t let us down.”
The main difference with NRF is that when it comes to recycling the baler film, it does not need to be separated from bale wrap – simplifying the process for farms and recycling plants.
“Now three years on, 98% of our customers are happily reaping the benefits of NRF which can also be taken by the recycling plant,” says Sam.
Bale wrap that works
For over a decade, Sam has trusted Silotite bale wrap, and more recently, the Pro 1,800-metre reels, Sam says it was a no brainer to use the film and film solution – Baletite.
“By nature of our business, we can’t afford to offer a product that we’re not 100% happy with and once we started using Silotite bale wrap, we ironed out any issues we’d faced with previous wrap products,” he adds.
During the first winter feeding, Sam received positive feedback about the bales from his customers, as well as experiencing the benefits first-hand when feeding his own youngstock.
“Initially, I had some customers tell me the bales were smaller, but one of the key benefits of using NRF is the added compression from the film, means the bales are much denser than they would be with net,” explains Sam.
“We manage the baling for a lot of farms in the area and knowing that nearly every single customer has made the transition to a more sustainable approach is really fulfilling; I know we’re having a positive impact on the farms we work with,” he adds.
Reaping the benefits
Two years ago, the Bloye family bought a dairy herd from a retiring farmer, installing a new 20/40 DeLaval milking parlour to improve efficiencies and save on labour.
With a Trewithen Dairy contract, the herd yields around 8,000 litres of milk per year from forage, Sam says the venture has allowed him to better understand his customers’ demands and requirement for forage.
“We clamp most of our silage,” says Sam. “Baling a small proportion of our silage helps reduce waste because we don’t have to open the main clamp up for a small number of animals which could lead to spoilage.”
“The film has also provided a more consistent shaped bale compared to when we used net, making them easier to handle and stack,” he adds.
“We feed two to three bales per day and noticed a difference in overall silage quality straight away, and that was backed up by the cows feeding well off it; no amount of data or analysis replaces a cow enjoying their forage.”
