Foundation Senior Fellow in British agricultural hotseat

2/5/2008

Geoff Davies OBE (1961-63), Managing Director of Alamo Group (Europe), British Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 and a Senior Fellow of the Foundation, has been elected President of the United Kingdom Agricultural Engineers’ Association (AEA).

Geoff was installed at a ceremony at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London this week and will be in post for two years and is seen here (on the right) with outgoing AEA President Harry Handkammer.

It is unusual for someone to hold the post for more than a year but Geoff says there is so much vital development work going on within the AEA and it is such a significant time for the industry that continuity and a high level of commitment will be essential to success.

Geoff told industry peers and dignitaries at the ceremony that agricultural machinery manufacturers had to meet the demands of British and European farmers who were under increasing pressure to produce food supply crops and material for bio-fuels. He highlighted three immediate challenges which had to be overcome in order to achieve that service to farming:

securing adequate supplies of raw materials in the face of strong competition from the rising economies of the east;
holding down prices of new machinery;
coping with the stresses of a lean workforce.

“If you can do all of those things there is great scope to prosper by serving agriculture in this country and further afield,” he said.

Geoff will be the guest speaker at the 2008 Otago Chamber of Commerce Business Awards dinner in Dunedin in late-November.