BEDMAX celebrate their 20th year in business - Managing Director, Tim Smalley recounts their progress
/
It is 20 years this Spring since the first yellow bags of BEDMAX shavings began appearing in UK racing yards, but the Northumberland-based family company has put its anniversary celebrations on hold. Like everyone else involved in the racing industry, Managing Director Tim Smalley has been fully occupied adapting operations to steer the BEDMAX team safely through these uncharted waters, and keeping production at record levels to support customers through the most disruptive crisis since the second World War.
“This is clearly a very serious problem we’re all facing, and it will obviously have serious consequences for many of us whose lives and livings revolve around horses. But I‘ve always thought that people who work with horses, and especially with racehorses, are better prepared than most to deal with setbacks and disasters. It’s been wonderful to see racing get back in the saddle again, and we’re looking forward to a return to something closer to normality as soon as possible.”
Every race starts in the stable... Photo: Sarah Farnsworth, by kind permission of Amanda Perrett, Coombelands Racing Stables.
Growing up surrounded by ponies, hunters and eventers on the family farm in north Northumberland, Tim opted out of horses in his teens and into agricultural engineering, and it wasn’t until he returned from a spell jackarooing in Australia in the early 80s that he started to put the two together in his first racing-based business.
Desert Orchid was one of the first customers for BEDMAX in 2000.
“Mustering cattle in the Kimberleys reignited the horse bug in me, and when I came home I started hunting again and did some point-to-pointing. At the same time my aunt was breeding some successful steeplechasers here in the stables where I now live, including Canny Danny, who won the Sun Alliance at Cheltenham in ’83, and Strands of Gold who won the Hennessy in ’88. I was looking for a way to make a living somehow on the edges of farming, and through my aunt I learned that trainers were looking for an alternative forage to hay. There was some significant research evidence emerging at the time about the damage airborne dust and spores could do to a horse’s respiratory system in the stable, and hay was seen as the main culprit.
“So my older brother Chris offered me the use of some of his hayfields at Greymare Farm, I restored two old small round-bale balers, and in 1987 we started making dust free haylage. We sealed the bales in yellow bags and called it HAYMAX, and racing customers seemed very happy with it.”
As haylage increasingly became the forage of choice in UK racing yards, it became apparent that traditional straw bedding was – and still is – as likely as hay to contain high levels of inorganic dust and microbial particles small enough to be inhaled deep into the respiratory system of a nasal obligate breather.
“By 1998, there were lots of suppliers making haylage for horses, but trainers were finding it difficult to source a dust free replacement for straw. Many were trying what I would call waste product shavings from the wood processing industries, but those also had a very high dust content, so I started to look at how we could produce a better bedding, and two years later we launched BEDMAX.”
In those two years, Tim tracked down as much of the research into equine respiratory health as he could and consulted trainers and leading equine veterinary experts, and he realised that dust was not the only health threat that horses face in the stable.
“Respiratory damage caused by airborne dust is the most significant health problem that good bedding can help prevent, but it also needs to help maintain good hoof health, it can play a big part in keeping the stable hygienic and suppressing ammonia, and it needs to provide a supportive base for horses to lie down and get the rest they need.
“I’ve always said it isn’t rocket science, but we put a lot of thought into making a top quality all-round healthy equine bedding. We were the first to cut larger shavings because they’re more resilient and supportive both for the hoof and for horses lying down. We dry them at sterilising temperatures but to a controlled 12% moisture content so they don’t dry out hooves and cause cracking. We make them from traceable, renewable timber we source here in the UK, and I prefer to use pine because it offers a unique level of natural antibacterial resistance. And we have always been aware that if we’re asking customers to pay a bit more for purpose-made bedding, it needs to be very good value for money.”
The other benefits Tim Smalley wanted all customers to be sure they got from BEDMAX were consistent quality, dependable supply, and knowledgeable support and service. As sales grew, the company built a second factory in the Midlands and then a third in Hampshire to keep up with demand, duplicating the unique production process Tim and his brother had built themselves at Greymare Farm, and they have invested steadily in new technology and more sophisticated dust screening and vacuum extraction to keep BEDMAX shavings at the top of the bedding performance rankings.
BEDMAX has led the British Equestrian Trade Association’s national survey results for the best-selling brand of bedding in the overall UK equestrian market since 2011, but racing still accounts for a large proportion of sales and Tim Smalley still values the approval of racing trainers and vets as the highest benchmark of success.
“Racing trainers were the first to recognise the need for a bedding that reduced dust levels to the lowest possible minimum. Obviously, this is particularly crucial in racing where even small compromises in respiratory health can make a big difference to performance, and racehorses do spend a lot of time in their stables. It gives me a headache even trying to think of all the factors a trainer has to take into account to get the best out of a horse, but I know that every detail is important, and I hope BEDMAX has helped remove or reduce at least one potential health risk.”
From the outset, it has been racing that has driven this family company’s success at home in the UK and then as a global exporter, first to trainers in Hong Kong, Europe and the Middle East, and more recently to Japan and mainland China. In January, one of the world’s leading studs ordered a shipment of Northumbrian BEDMAX to be delivered to Australia for their stallions standing for the season down under.
“We’ve travelled a long way from Greymare Farm since those first bags went off in our lorry to Malton and Middleham,” says Tim Smalley, “and it’s a pity our 20th anniversary has been overtaken by the coronavirus. But we’re in this for the long run, and we’re even more deeply committed to supporting our racing customers and their horses through this setback and on to the next 20 years.”
