The new managers of S&N Sprayer are pleased with their location, their employees and their production, and they have big plans for the plant.
Buster Norris sold the sprayer portion of the business last year to Ag Spray Equipment Inc., a company based in Hopkinsville, Ky. He still owns the aquaculture and wastewater-treatment components, which now are housed on Sycamore Avenue as S&N Airoflo.
Todd Barbee, who began working as the manager of S&N Sprayer in January, said the prospects for the business look good.
"We're excited about the spray business in the future," he said. "We have a lot of new ideas that hopefully are going to be implemented."
Ag Spray also has offices in Oklahoma and Dothan, Ala. It does business from the Texas/Oklahoma area up the East Coast to Maryland, dealing with a variety of crops.
Until now, the Kentucky plant has handled production for all the other locations. The eventual plan is to move production for the Oklahoma market to Greenwood, while also making S&N items here to be sent to Dothan and Oklahoma.
They expect to increase the quantities of some of the items they make in Greenwood now as well as add some new products.
"We're just going to incorporate a lot more products that we're going to be building out of our Greenwood location that will actually be distributed all over the South," Barbee said.
The timetable for this is being discussed, and it probably will be August before they decide how much production to add here.
They also plan to update the offices at their Eastman Street location and redesign the plant. The plant work, scheduled to be done in August, is expected to improve the flow from raw materials at one end of the building to a finished product at the other. New equipment also will be added to speed production.
In addition, S&N will implement an aggressive early-season buying program that already has its salespeople excited, Barbee said.
"We're really going to get in the face of our customers and see what we've done well in the past and what we want to capitalize on," he said. "If we didn't hold up our end, we certainly want to know about it and certainly become better."
Ag Spray was established in 1972. David Barbee, its general manager and the brother of Todd Barbee, bought it in 1989.
Greenwood fits into Ag Spray's territory well, David Barbee said.
"We have such a long distance between Hopkinsville and Oklahoma, and this sort of fits in the middle of that," he said.
Todd Barbee said the deal has helped broaden Ag Spray's product line. For example, Ag Spray had never built tractor-mounted items and didn't have much row-crop equipment.
It also can sell more cotton-related items to places such as Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama and Georgia from Greenwood.
"Definitely S&N has helped us with some new lines for our row crop business, which we are excited about," Todd Barbee said.
The Barbees said production in Greenwood has gone well. They are still going through a transition handling purchase orders, bills, and other papers that must go through the Kentucky headquarters.
Sales have been strong as well, Todd Barbee said. "We'd like to be stronger, but they're strong."
They are pleased with the employees they inherited, including Ronnie Morris, the production manager; Anthony O'Bryant, who works in the sales and engineering side of design; and Jerry Eades, the parts manager. "We kept a lot of the key employees who do a phenomenal job for us," Todd Barbee said.
The former incarnation of S&N had 45 to 50 employees, and now S&N Sprayer and S&N Airflo have about that many combined.
S&N Sprayer has added five people recently, and "hopefully that number will continue to grow," David Barbee said.
Todd Barbee said he and his family have gotten a very positive response from the community since moving to Greenwood.
"Just by coming into a smaller community, it's been great," he said. "The people have come with open arms."
