PROFILE FEATURE
Ground breaking technology from Garfords of Frognall Creating solutions to problems has been the stock in trade of the Garford family since Norman Garford set about building his own sugar beet harvester in his farm shed at Fox Covert Farm, Maxey in the 1950s. He was encouraged to take the prototype he had made to the sugar beet demonstrations held in Lincolnshire in 1953, where it attracted the attention of farm machinery dealers Crawfords of Frithville, who became the first distributors of the GBW Sugar Beet Harvester. Norman formed a company with Reg Butcher and Dick Witt (hence GBW) to manufacture the machine which they did from premises in Mill Lane, Maxey. Over the next decade the machine gained in popularity and in 1963 the firm was made an offer that they couldn’t refuse and sold out to Pershore, Worcestershire-based Fisher Humphries. Norman bought Nunton Lodge Farm at this time and resumed his career as a farmer. He had, however, three sons who had inherited his interest in farm machinery and the trio would modify and build machinery for their own use, thinking nothing of chopping and welding and creating, well… solutions to problems they came across daily on the farm. In the late 1970s they started to manufacture small hoeing and band spraying equipment. These were the days when it was common for farmers to hoe with a tractor-mounted hoe and to send a team of labourers in afterwards to 18
hoe manually. Band sprayers allowed the more costeffective use of selective herbicides as they were able to get closer to the crops. The need for band sprayers declined over the ensuing years but in the meanwhile the team at Nunton had seen a new topping device for a sugar beet harvester and began designing their own version. Once again they were encouraged by British Sugar to demonstrate their model at the National Sugar Beet demonstrations and once again they received a good reception. Manufacturing commenced and soon they were selling the ‘Skew Bar’ topping kit as a conversion kit for other farmers’ sugar beet harvesters under licence from the National Institute of Agricultural Engineers (NIAE). Not long afterward the Garford Victor Sugar Beet Harvester was designed and became commonplace among sugar beet growers across the
UK. Norman, Michael, Robert, Philip and his father in law, Ted Chamberlain, worked together on the beet harvesting products through the 1990s, and in 1994 moved to new premises in Hards Lane, Frognall. In 2010 the business was incorporated as Norman and Ted retired and Robert took on the full-time running
