Shaun Groom traces his career journey from riding and repairing field bikes on Northfolk farmyards to leading the UK operation of the family-owned Italian OEM, Merlo
From winning BMW Apprentice of the Year in 1993, to shipping refurbished telehandlers to New Zealand’s film industry in the 2000s, Shaun Groom’s career has been defined by an enduring fascination with engines – and now, increasingly, with what might replace them.
We meet Groom on the Merlo stand at the PlantWorx construction expo in Newark, UK, grabbing a cup of coffee in amongst the OEM’s distinct green-liveried vehicles, with music from the stand’s demo area providing an upbeat soundtrack to our chat.
“My family background was in plant hire and agriculture,” Groom tells us. “I grew up in rural Norfolk, and anything with an engine fascinated me as a child. So I had field bikes and I had cars before I could drive officially, and I’d always worked on them.”
That early passion led him to a BMW dealership for his apprenticeship, where he became one of the manufacturer’s top apprentices and earned a trip to Germany. “BMW were one of the pioneers of CANbus technology,” says Groom. “So, we were using multiplex-type wiring back in the late 80s, early 90s.” He even drove a hydrogen-powered BMW 7 Series in 1993. “I remember the boot was completely filled with the tank!”
But in 1995, Groom left the car world for agricultural machinery. After working for various dealers in the UK, he spent three years in New Zealand in the early 2000s, where he first encountered Merlo telehandlers through an Irish acquaintance at the OEM.
When Groom returned from New Zealand, his planned employment fell through, leading to an entrepreneurial venture exporting used Merlo telehandlers to New Zealand principally for use in lighting rigs for the film industry, which was booming off the back of The Lord of the Rings blockbusters.
“Merlo at the time couldn’t produce enough new machines,” says Groom. “I was sourcing very tidy used machines in Germany, refurbishing them to a high standard, and shipping them to New Zealand.”
However, unpredictable revenues from his venture led Groom to seek permanent employment. As a result, he spent the next 15 years with an Austrian agricultural implement manufacturer Pottinger, rising from product specialist to managing director in the UK.
More recently, Merlo came calling. “I had known the business for a long time and had a lot of respect for the product and the family,” says Groom. “I was satisfied in my job, but I saw a lot of opportunities at Merlo, and potential challenges, which I thrive on.”
Building from within
After nearly five years into his tenure as general manager at Merlo UK, Groom has a deep understanding of the strengths of the machines and emphasises the Italian manufacturer’s distinctive approach to production. “Typically, we’re making around 92% of the components ourselves in house,” he says. “And that’s important for the business. It was proven to be a good strategy in the last few years with supply-chain challenges – it put us in a strong position.”
“I grew up in rural Norfolk, and anything with an engine fascinated me”
The company serves both agricultural and construction sectors, with subtle but important differences between machines for each market. “In agriculture, the machines tend to be used more intensively,” says Groom. “On a livestock operation, a machine is being used in excess of 1,000 hours a year. In a typical construction application it’s 500 hours a year.”
Agricultural machines also face harsher conditions. “Whether it’s slurry, fertilizer, water or mud, the machines tend to work in extreme conditions,” he says. “Whereas in construction, you’re often working on concrete yards.”
Therefore, Merlo’s agricultural telehandlers have more powerful engines to deliver the necessary extra capacity required. However, construction models have greater reach – up to 35m in rotating versions, while agricultural machines typically max out around 11m, as the highest work they are usually do is stacking straw bales.
The electric question
Standing beside Merlo’s eWorker at PlantWorx, Groom discusses the company’s move into electrification with the pragmatism of someone who’s spent decades around engines. The eWorker, which comes in twoor four-wheel drive versions, has proven particularly successful in agriculture. Groom believes a big reason for this is pressure from shops and consumers. “There’s a lot of transparency in the food supply chain,” says Groom. “Supermarkets are now looking to farmers to demonstrate their green credentials.”
“The biggest challenges I see are in the production, availability, distribution and storage of alternative fuels”
The four-wheel drive eWorker is powered using either lead-acid or lithium batteries produced be fellow Italian firm FAAM. It uses four electric motors – one on each front wheel hub and one on the axle at the rear – plus a fifth motor driving all the hydraulics. This year, the machine earned a gold medal from the Royal Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland, a key part of which was based on feedback from operators in the field.
“We’ve got them not only in farms in Scotland but also in a whisky distillery,” says Groom. “The appeal for them is no fumes or combustion, because one of their big concerns is fire risk.”
Interestingly, over 90% of eWorker sales are lead-acid batteries rather than lithium. “A lot of that comes down to end-of-life,” he says. “With lead acid, it’s a fully recyclable product. With lithium you can dispose of it, but technically there’s still no recovery process.”
There’s also existing knowledge to leverage. “The lifttruck industry has used lead-acid for years,” says Groom. “We’re selling these into places where they’ve had lift-trucks. So they’re familiar with lead acid. They’ve got the charging equipment.”
Rental resistance
While agriculture has embraced electric telehandlers, the construction rental sector has been slower. “Renters are not prepared to pay a premium for electric,” says Groom. “They expect to rent an electric machine for the same price as a diesel, or possibly less, because they believe they’re taking a risk.”
This frustrates him, given the technology’s maturity. “My views are a little different – it’s actually more of a known quantity,” he says. “Electric propulsion has been around for years. Milk was delivered to nearly every home in the UK by electric propulsion 50 years ago.”
He also draws on his father’s career in heavy plant maintenance for perspective. He worked on massive electric draglines and face shovels in opencast mines. “These huge machines move thousands of tons of soil a day using electricity,” says Groom. “It was the most efficient way to do it. The amount of diesel required to propel those machines would be phenomenal and difficult to get to that area.”
The infrastructure gap
Looking ahead, Groom sees the future of zero-emission machinery as still unclear: “The consensus is mixed, whether it’s electric, methane or hydrogen. Those synthetic fuels are clearly in development.”
Merlo works with four engine OEM partners – Perkins, FPT, Deutz, and Rehlko (formerly Kohler) – all developing alternative fuels. “It’s got to be commercially viable, it’s got to be practical,” says Groom. “The biggest challenges I see are in the production, availability, distribution and storage of alternative fuels. With an electric machine we know where we can charge it,” he says. “That can’t currently be said for alternative fuels.”
For transition to succeed, he believes, governments must act. “There has to be motivation and drive from governments to make it happen,” he says, “They’ve got to invest in infrastructure to support the transition. We’ve had decade upon decade of internal combustion engines – if we’re going to see any kind of transition, there also needs to be financial incentives in the form of tax relief or direct subsidies.”
Standing beside machines representing both Merlo’s electric and diesel ranges, Groom embodies the industry’s bridging generation – engineers comfortable with both combustion and electrons, shaped by hands-on mechanical roots but navigating towards a zero-emission future. “It’s always been ‘anything with an engine’ for me,” he says. “But, in fact, not all of them have engines anymore.”
This article first appeared in the October issue of iVT
