Anyone for a BAILEYS?


Bailey’s of Norfolk is a family run business that has been supplying topsoil products to the sportsturf industry since 1976. When speaking to Managing Director, Alan Bailey, one immediately gets a feel for the passion and drive that goes into running a successful family business.


Alan Bailey Report by Laurence Gale MSc Alan Bailey is heavily involved in the


day-to-day running of the business and, in the topsoil industry, this literally means getting his hands dirty. During my visit he was busy painting his latest investment, a secondhand grading machine. Having stripped it down and serviced all moving parts Alan was giving it a final coat of paint. In keeping with many family run concerns, Alan has reinvested the profits back into the business.


John Farrell


It is very apparent that, if you’re serious about manufacturing rootzones and topdressings, you need some pretty big pieces of kit. For example, the buckets on the loading shovels carry a seven tonne payload; the barrel on the drying plant cost a cool £250,000! Throw in a fifteen bay storage unit with the capacity to store 5,000 tonnes of topdressing in a clean, dry environment, a dozen power screeners, two bagging lines and a soil testing laboratory and you’re getting close to the infrastructure needed to manufacture a product to a consistently high standard.


The Bailey’s depot has the capacity to Nigel Fahey 100


store thousands of tonnes of materials. As well as a perfect supply of raw material in the indigenous black fen Norfolk soil they also have a network of contacts able to supply other materials. Sand and topsoil are blended, graded and mixed as required by the end user. Alan’s son Adrian, is Production Manager and


oversees the movement of materials in the yard. Keeping the materials free of contamination is imperative to the production and handling process. For example, at the quarry, the stockpiles of sand sit on a bed of the same material; this eliminates contamination from the quarry floor when loading. All vehicles are swept clean before loading to avoid contamination from the previous load. Ground contamination is eliminated at


the production facility by loading and off-loading from a concrete pad. Once the rootzone or topdressing is produced, it is held in clean, dry holding bays, prior to loading for delivery. The shovel buckets are cleaned with every new mix and tyres are also kept clean so as not to contaminate the floor of the holding bays.


The company runs its own fleet of tipper lorries, allowing full control over deliveries, with drivers out on the road everyday. Topdressing is often delivered before 7.00am to allow easy access through clubhouse car parks, before they fill up with members’ cars. John Farrell MSc is the company’s


Technical Director and joined after graduating from the University of East Anglia in 1992. One of his first tasks was to set-up the original Soil Testing Laboratory. “We see soil analysis as an essential tool in testing whether a material is


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