It was while returning from the Northern Territory that Alister Turner witnessed the scale of the Queensland drought and realised there was a need to link drought stricken farmers to plentiful supplies of high quality fodder while managing the logistics of long distance transport.
Armed with this objective in mind, Alister established Haylink in 2013, which initially involved sourcing high quality hay from the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia.
Since then, Haylink has flourished and expanded nationwide with the focus always remaining on sourcing top quality hay.
“With a long history in large scale cropping, commodity transport logistics, contract harvesting, shearing contracting and lots of travel, I was used to juggling many balls at once so I threw my last $200 on an advert in the Queensland Country Life and hoped for a response,” he said.
The response “came like an avalanche”, requiring Alister to quickly learn how to drive a telehandler and use the technology required to run the business.
Haylink provides the link between consumers and producers of hay anywhere in Australia, with Alister and his staff organising all loading, transport and logistics, while smoothing out any hassles involved for producers and consumers.
“We supply hay and straw, predominately in large heavyweight square bales for maximum transport economy, as well as compressed palletised small bales in bulk load orders. We don’t supply round bales.”
He said Haylink sources and supplies hay from all over the nation but strongly prefers to use the South Australian hay as the industry quality standards “are far superior to other states and poor quality hay never produces good feeding results or value for money”.
“Haylink has its own loading equipment and established network of hand picked predominately owner driver transport contractors.
“I’m present and active in all aspects of the supply chain, so as to ensure the highest standards of quality control, transport efficiency and personal service.”
Alister said Haylink prices are always competitive but that the quality standard won’t be reduced to meet a lower customer target price unless specifically requested by the client.
“The core strength of the business is our ability to respond to demand of any magnitude with high quality product and prompt service.”
He said maintaining and forging strong relationships with all members of the supply chain is integral in achieving these high standards.
“My long term goal for Haylink is to grow in strength and remain in business by constantly evolving, learning and building upon the solid foundation that’s in place.”
