Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Brandon based F&P Systems has produced a vacuum system, designed to make light of the dirtiest work – removing dung from animal enclosures.

Having attained a market lead in the three and a half years since the launch of its first product, the company is now closing in on a lucrative deal with a US based manufacturer and distributor.

The company’s ‘paddock maintenance system,’ the Predator, is the brainchild of David Fenton and Chris Porter, who with respective spouses Maggie and Helen make up the four partners of the company.

David Fenton said: “We made our first sale about four and a half years ago and sales volumes have increased steadily to the stage where we are now selling around 200 units a year.”

“While we have sold the product all round the globe – to France, Ireland and Japan, for example – the shipping costs for a small organisation such as ourselves rules out a full-scale assault on a particular world market.”

That may be about to change, with the start of “serious discussions” with a US based manufacturer with global distribution capabilities.

Fenton said: “This potential partner would give us access to a market six to eight times the size of the UK. It would also give us access to the US-based Llama and Alpaca market – bred for their wool – in addition to the equine sector.

Alpacas and Llamas are farmed in the UK, but it is an emerging market.

“There are currently around 5,000 of the animals in the UK at present and breeders are trying to get that number up to about 40,000 to create a viable fleece industry.”

The company is set to expand on to the global stage from a solid UK base. It has already secured customers in the UK Army and Thames Valley Police stables, as well in racehorse stables and studs, riding stables, equestrian centres and even game bird farms.

The removal of dung is an important and potentially life-saving business within the equine industry.

The control of parasitic tapeworm, which live and breed in horse dung, is a matter that even the veterinary pharmaceutical industry has to work very hard to keep under control, with tapeworm exhibiting a confounding ability to develop immunity to drug treatments.

New wormers are produced every six months to keep one step ahead of the parasite. There are a whole host of other parasites, flies and bugs which also live in the dung.

Effective removal of the parasite’s breeding ground was seen by Fenton and Porter as worthy of analysis, especially as the job of dung collecting is still carried out by hand.

Fenton said: “Like a lot of good ideas, this one came about as a result of an informal chat over dinner with a good bottle of wine.

“We reviewed the paddock maintenance systems that were available for the equine market and decided they all showed room for improvement in efficiency, effectiveness and user-friendliness.

“Removing dung from wet, long grass is quite a tricky business. Our products, the Predator series, are designed to address all three of these factors.”

Like all well-engineered products, the Predator benefits from its simplicity. It is effectively a large hopper on wheels, with a mounted vacuum system which can be towed behind a tractor, sit-on mower, quad-bike or ATV.

However, the innovation is in the detail. The use of vacuum-based technology in paddock maintenance is by no means a new concept, but they are traditionally very heavy and unwieldy.

This is a problem considering that manual labour in the equine industry tends to be carried out by women. S&P has overcome this design flaw with the adoption of a simple gantry system, which provides a counter-balance for the large bulky hose necessary to clean up horse dung.

The gantry means the hose is virtually weightless and very easy to manoeuvre, and can also be extended, giving a much wider reach.

The company also improved the design of the hopper to overcome the traditionally muscle-intensive nature of removing the dung once collected.

The Predator comes with a centrally-hinged hopper which opens up to drastically improve the efficiency of the equipment cleaning process.

Perhaps the most important innovation is the company’s approach to the vacuum system itself.

The company has decoupled the petrol-driven engine drive from the fan, gearing it up using a pair of fan belts, and also altered the design of the fan itself to produce an ultra-powerful vacuum system.

The company has benefited from the expertise of partner and engineering adviser, Briggs and Stratton, which provides the Predator’s engine.