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I am Sean Rafferty. I live outside Castlecaulfield with my wife and young daughter and work on the family farm. I have always been interested in engineering and have always loved to find out how things work. When I was at school I dismantled and repaired mobile phones as a hobby. This interest in engineering has led me to where I am today, running my own engineering business called Mainplant Ltd on the farm at Castlecaulfield. Mainplant Ltd designs, manufactures and installs magnetic separators for the recycling and construction industries as well as conveyor systems, aggregate crushing and screening systems and concrete production plants. Mainplant also provides a plate cutting service for a number of local companies. I knew a lot about engineering but very little about running a business when I started Mainplant. I heard that the Diversification Challenge-Business Start programme would help me so I enrolled and completed the course in the spring of 2009. I found all the different training sessions very useful. The cash flow and time management were the major ones for me. I hadn’t thought about these issues before starting up, but now realise that they are the most important areas for any business. I looked forward to attending the workshops which were run on a weekly basis. They were well planned and not exhaustive and I found that it was good to talk with people who were in the same position as me. The networking opportunities were good. I would recommend it to anyone starting or thinking of starting a business because it will give you a good insight into how to run and maintain a profitable business with a good reputation.
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