Martin Pears Engineering: the treasure trove all South Hams smallholders and farmers need to know about

Martin Pears Engineering is the local business that, through toil and hard graft, just keeps growing. With a desire to fill the gaps and meet the needs of anyone with a farm or smallholding, here we speak to Louise Pears about the family business and what it’s all about…

Tell me a bit about Martin Pears Engineering…

I’m Louise and Martin’s my husband, and we started our company 13 years ago. At the time I had my own bookkeeping business and Martin was an agricultural engineer working alongside his parents' agricultural engineering and contracting business. At the time we felt there was an opportunity to retail compact tractors in the area, so we found a manufacturer who we invested in and have grown things from there.

We set up the business on the same site as Martin’s family business and started sourcing suppliers of a variety of machinery for us to sell. By investing we grew and we got many franchises including one for Suzuki quad bikes as well as taking on a variety of other machinery brands.

Last year we decided to put up a new building here for office and storage space, after Cornwall Farmers closed, to help fill the gap they left in the market. We got planning and a government grant for a building that would house office space and storage facilities, which we started building in February this year and finished on 9th May.

We’ve got an upstairs area, where we will be establishing new lines hopefully including workwear and horticultural side of the business. Downstairs we have a lot of everyday consumables for the rural; community from chainsaws to animal feed, all of which is new and already taking regular orders.

What do you do?

Everything that farmers and smallholders need to run their businesses. The core of the business is machinery and maintenance of that machinery, but we also cover a variety of other items and services now as well. From quad bikes to everything for large scale farmers, repairs and maintenance for lorries and cars. We also stock a range of spare parts for a wide range of machines.

More recently we have developed a line of feed and bedding for animals including horses, alpacas, goats, pigs, sheep and cattle, which we can deliver in larger quantities direct to farms. We have introduced Pears branded minerals and have brought in hay and animal bedding products. With the new space we now have water fittings, hand tools and garden products, a range of boots and workwear, oils, trailer accessories and more. We’re also do fencing materials and stock a huge range of gates and livestock handling equipment.

Who’s involved/how many people?

In 2014 Martin’s parents decided to retire so we bought them out of the site and the engineering side of the business, which we then integrated into our business. I then joined in a full time capacity and things continued to grow. When we took over the three acre site we only had one full time employee, an apprentice and ourselves, but today there’s 11 of us on site.

We’re still a family business, and my daughter Ashley is now the face of the shop. We have full time guys in the workshop, a driver who delivers locally and nationally, Amanda who looks after customer service, and Julia who does accounts.

What do people not realise about what you do?

I think a lot of people don’t realise the breadth of the service and rage of products that we offer, so it’s important to us that we are able to share that and make it known.

What plans do you have moving forward?

Now we’ve just about got everything we want to stock, so its about maintaining the service. However, if there’s plenty more we can grow into and if there’s something people feel they need then we would always look into the feasibility of stocking it.

Really it’s just trying to get people to know the variety of things we have and do. Our goal has always been to fill a gap in the market. So we don’t do things like slug pellets because there are other places that cater for that locally and we have no desire to try to take over from other local businesses.

We just want to save people from having to travel too far if they’re living in the South Hams. We’re central, so we’re somewhere to go to reduce your carbon footprint and give a good well priced solution that saves time as well.

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