While lots of contractors take pride in providing a “comprehensive” service, few can equal the complete package offered by Steve Pack Agricultural Services when it comes to liming and fertiliser spreading.

Steve not only carries out the soil sampling and analysis that ensures the right amount of lime or fertiliser can be spread in exactly the right places, but he makes his own products and keeps large supplies in stock to ensure he can always meet his customers’ needs.

With his own fertiliser plant making the renowned XOP (Xtra Organic Phosphate) and a unique supply chain that ensure he always has stocks of Envirocal 70, a fine grained lime product with additional trace elements and boasting 98% reactivity, Steve Pack Agricultural Services offers an unbeatable service from analysis to spreading.

Materials are usually delivered on Steve’s own fleet of lorries, ensuring they reach customers in good time before, in most cases, being spread by Dan Tong of DT Agri Ltd.

Dan uses Steve’s spreaders, one a custom-built Bunning 120 HBD Compact designed to his own specifications (“a game changer” in his view) and the other a top of the range Bredal K105 with a stainless steel hopper, weigh cells, auto calibration and full GPS-controlled autosteer.

For smaller loads in far-flung locations where driving a tractor to site would be impractical and expensive, Steve uses a MAN spreader with a similarly high spec. It has central tyre inflation so that the pressures can be dropped while on the field, reducing compaction, and then re-inflated for the journey back to base, along with 750mm tyres on the rear axle and full GPS connectivity for guidance and variable rate spreading.

Now based at Ivy End Farm, Pluckley in Kent, Steve has a range of business interests with a focus on delivering top quality lime and fertiliser spreading services to farmers, fruit growers and vineyards across Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

Steve Pack Agricultural Services carries out pH sampling as well as sampling for phosphate, potassium and magnesium (P, K and Mg) and then spreads products according to the results of the in-house analysis, with processing and reporting carried out by Lizzie Hyde and Vicky Pack.

Meanwhile Steve set up Newbury Fertilisers Ltd in Sittingbourne in 2016, taking over and modernising a plant that makes the popular XOP fertiliser, a product that sells out each year and is unique to Steve Pack Agricultural Services.

The naturally based, recycled product is rich in silicon phosphate, which makes the phosphate readily available to the plants, and also contains 5% elemental carbon. “Farmers love it and most of it is sold as repeat orders each year,” Steve commented. A new screening and blending plant to create XOP was installed last year.

Steve’s third linked company is Resource Services Ltd, which has the contract to take Envirocal 70, another recycled product, from the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery on the River Thames in London.

Envirocal 70 is a fine lime which has a number of advantages over quarried chalk, although Steve Pack Agricultural Services offers both to its customers. “It’s a matter of personal preference,” he said, “but the benefit of Envirocal is that we always have plenty in stock – up to 10,000 tonnes at times – and it’s ideal in the spring when it can be difficult to find chalk after a wet winter.

“At the end of the day the three businesses are all focused on the same goal, which is to help Steve Pack Agricultural Services deliver the best possible service to the customer, whether they need lime, fertiliser, compost, manure or chicken litter.”

When Steve moved to the 13-acre Ivy End Farm site three years ago, he gained 21,000 square feet of buildings. The site, now the main base of the business, provides one of a number of product stores he has across Kent, while a converted section of one building is now the home of HB Oak Frames, which builds oak-framed homes and other buildings.

“They moved in as regular tenants, but when they realised that I also had planning permission to build a home on the site, they persuaded me to let them build it,” said Steve, before showing South East Farmer around the impressive, half-finished, oak-framed house.

While working in agriculture as a contractor, Steve confessed that he had always wanted “to produce something”, which is why he has recently been granted planning permission to build a substantial cattle finishing unit on the land at Ivy End Farm.

“I grew up on a beef and arable farm with my dad Sam in Hertfordshire and I have always wanted to take my farming beyond the liming service,” explained Steve, who worked on a beef finishing unit while at Harper Adams University, where he graduated with a first class degree in agriculture and land and farm management. The unit will be big enough to take 100 head of cattle for finishing.

Achieving planning consent for the house and the finishing shed has been a challenging process and one that has benefited from the support of Price Whitehead planning consultants, the firm which also helped Steve achieve planning consent for the fertiliser processing plant at Sittingbourne in 2016.

“Price Whitehead has been invaluable in providing planning consultancy and advice,” said Steve. “Bruce and Helen Whitehead run their own cattle farm alongside the planning, design, and surveying practice, so they have a tremendous level of understanding and expertise.”

Joining Steve, Vicky and Lizzie to complement the team at Ivy End Farm are Jon Topping, who runs the Sittingbourne fertiliser plant and is responsible for soil sampling, and Andy Taylor, who oversees the day to day operations of Resource Services.

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