Krone UK Dealer Focus
Compass Tractors were established in 2004 working out of a small converted farm yard with 3 employees. Today nearly 20 years on the company employs 25 people and turns over around 25 million from a single branch, they are based in Sedgemoor, Somerset.
Managing director Justin Nichols says “One of the biggest contributors to our success is careful selection of products and franchises. We have always selected products we believe to be the best in their field for design, performance, build quality and reliability. Yes these products come with a higher price tag, but they also generally command a high demand and residual value second-hand which in turn, reduces the overall running and ownership costs for our customers”.
"Compass started this ethos off with the Fendt brand which has an excellent reputation for design and quality and then set out their stool to build a compliment of likeminded products around this tractor brand. One of the first of these was Krone back in 2005. Not only did they have a very complete and established range of Mowers, Tedders and Rakes but we could also see the potential of their BiG X Forage Harvester and BiG Pack Balers which were still trying to establish themselves in the market. Today Compass has become one the biggest Krone dealers in the UK!
Over the past 20 years we have put in a lot of hard work alongside Krone to build the brands following in the Southwest, especially with the BiG X and BiG Pack.
Most of our forage customers now have at least one piece of Krone equipment and many have a complete fleet! We now have a large park of foragers out working in the field at any one time, eight of which are 1180 models.
We’ve also made massive inroads to the big baler market by working hard to build customer confidence to try their first Krone baler and then by standing strong on their trade-in values in order to build the residual values and complete the overall ownership package. Today the baler sells itself and the second-hand fly’s out the door and we generally believe there is not a better all round Grass & Straw baler on the market. This also goes for the rest of the range of Krone forage equipment, whether you are a small farmer looking for a single rotor rake through to the largest contractor needing a high hp forager, Krone have something to match.
The other major contributor to our success is the partnership we have with Krone as a company. For a major manufacturer they are still very personable and on the ground especially when things go a little wrong, as they can do from time to time. We love that their only focus is Forage and don’t have any other distractions like tractors and telehandlers which many of the other major players have. They are passionate about their product and constantly reinvesting into innovative new designs and technology backed up by a fantastic network of people and resources.
I have no doubt in saying they are one of the best and most pleasurable suppliers we deal with."