How Agri-Fab grew a 50-year legacy by nurturing lawns and communities alike
Since 1975, homeowners have turned to Agri-Fab’s wide range of lawn products and attachments for their lawncare needs. The company is dedicated to manufacturing durable, high-quality products, guaranteeing that each offering is made with the very best components for lasting performance. As proof of this commitment, all of Agri-Fab’s lawn care products come with a limited warranty, ranging from one to five years. With the company celebrating its milestone 50th anniversary this year, Deacon Patient, President, reflects on the company’s journey in the industry as well as its place in the community.
“At Agri-Fab, we are a leader in the manufacturing of lawn and garden tractor attachments that cater to retail customers and original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Our products take the hard work out of yard work and give time back to our customers to be able to use their time to do what they enjoy most. We are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year, a key milestone in our history which I cannot talk about without mentioning our employees. Back in 1975, a manufacturing institution in Sullivan, Illinois, a small town of about 4,600 people, closed the doors of its facility. At that time, a small group of individuals had the faith to pool their resources together with the core purpose of providing employment to the local community, resulting in the creation of Agri-Fab. Fifty years on, that still is the case, and we continue to manufacture in a small rural town with the bulk of our employment coming from Sullivan and the surrounding areas. The existing facilities have been added onto at least a half a dozen time over the last five decades. As a result, our Sullivan manufacturing facility spans about 320,000 square feet and we have an additional 300,000 square feet in our Decatur, Illinois facility, which serves as a light assembly plant. Additionally, our vertical integration of specialized manufacturing processes sets us apart in our industry. For instance, we were an early adopter of robotic welding and are about to take possession of a new Mazak 10K Neo laser that will further expand our metal cutting capabilities. Over the past year, we have also added additional electric brake presses as well as a hybrid tube bender,” Deacon explains.
Through its enhanced manufacturing footprint, Agri-Fab is empowered to deliver a broader range of products suited to various lawn care needs. “The offering we have become synonymous with is our lawn sweepers, which are designed to be pulled behind a tractor to collect lawn clippings. Lawn sweepers are particularly useful in the fall for leaf and debris collection. Additionally, we are renowned for our fertilizer and salt spreaders, carts, including polycarts and steel carts, along with groomers, aerators, lawn rollers, and vacuum systems that attach to tractors. We continue to invest in innovation within these core products and some adjacent areas. For instance, we have expanded into subcompact utility tractors and larger three-point attachment sprayers, as well as material collection systems that can ride along on a subcompact utility tractor. Moreover, we are targeting the commercial small agriculture and hobby farmer markets. One of our key focuses at the moment is exploring how we can incorporate electrification and autonomous applications into our products to further reduce the amount of work required for yard maintenance,” Deacon informs.
Above all, Agri-Fab is wholeheartedly dedicated to making its employees’ work lives more enjoyable and easier. “In 2018, we decided to invest in our Decatur distribution center to expand our assembly capacities. Decatur has a bigger population than Sullivan, so we were focused on recruiting a larger workforce from a broader pool. However, all components that go into the assembly of our products are still manufactured in our Sullivan site, which serves as a support system for our facility in Decatur. In the early 1990s, as a manufacturer in a town of 4,600 people, we aimed to offer quality, good-paying jobs to local families. The family unit is important to our employees, who are themselves part of our Agri-Fab family, and to us. This commitment led us to establish our Proto-Tykes daycare, providing affordable, reduced-cost daycare for our employees. This year, we broke ground on a new daycare center. Our current Proto-Tykes daycare is just under 5000 square feet, while the new center will be over 9000 square feet, enabling us to accommodate more of our employees’ children.
“As our business turns 50, we are now seeing the second and third generations working here. It is not uncommon to see people who started out in our daycare, later earning engineering degrees or pursuing trades as fabricators or assemblers in our facility. In fact, many people’s first exposure to our company was through our daycare center, which we truly cherish. There is nothing like stepping outside after a meeting to see the kids playing and bubbles floating past the office windows, it is such a joy. The idea for our daycare center originated with Sheila Harshman, the wife of our original president, and we have cultivated it ever since,” Deacon elaborates.
Shifting the focus to the event on everyone’s mind at Agri-Fab, Deacon is eager to describe how the company will celebrate its 50th anniversary. “Each month, we host a specific event with a different theme and gifts for our Agri-Fab family to mark this milestone. We plan to continue this throughout the year; we have already celebrated a couple of months with brunches, lawn bag chairs, and more. One of our most significant celebrations will take place in October when we commemorate our 50 years with our community through a large event featuring activities like games and a bouncy house. Additionally, baseball is big in Sullivan, so we always host an opening day cookout each year. Not only were we able to do that again this year, but we were also able to incorporate some anniversary festivities into that event. Essentially, we intend to make this a grand celebration, as it is an amazing milestone. Maintaining our success for five decades would not have been possible without our employees and the decisions they make every day while working with and for this great company. It truly has always been about the people for us at Agri-Fab,” he concludes.