Company History
Tim went to Askham Bryan College and finished in 1999 with a Diploma in Agriculture and returned home to work on the family farm with 100 cows. In 2000 he researched and looked into putting new milking equipment into the farm. He was advised at the time to look to the future and consider robotic milking equipment. Tim then travelled around the UK with his father and also went independently to Holland to see the various systems being offered. He opted for 2 off the single box style Lely A2 robots which each can milk about 65 cows.
These were installed on the farm during the summer of 2001. After the first year or so of use Tim saw many of the benefits of robotic milking and had a lot of interest. He entered the Defra sponsored farm visits program, this gave the opportunity for all businesses to visit other businesses and learn from each other. Tim was one of the farming hosts and had during the course of a year well over 1000 visitors.
In 2003 he was awarded the prize of “Best farming Host”, and was given a place on a Government sponsored fact finding tour around Europe with the heads of other category winners like IBM, Jaguar and a range of other key people from other industries, even a Zoo! In 2002 with all the interest and the facts and figures behind him he started to look for a diversification away from just cows on our farm. With all the free time the robots had created it give him time to do more. He was offered a role at another milking companies robotic milking division as a sales manager for this area, however he was also talking to Lely and through them, in 2003 he set up Tim Gibson Ltd, and became an Agent for the Lely Astronaut milking robot to offer sales, installation and ongoing support.
Tim now runs 2 divisions under Tim Gibson Ltd, one based here in Yorkshire from the farm, the other from Garstang to cover the West. In 2009 together with another company called MTS Agricultural Services, based in Carlisle took on the franchise for Northern Cumbria and South West Scotland. This joint venture is known as MTS Gibson Ltd and is based at Longtown which is on the Scottish Border. As well as the farm and the Lely businesses Tim has also held roles within the wider dairy industry. Tim Gibson Ltd currently employs 10 people.
