Poltross Enterprises is a small family partnership, run by father and son José and Martin Guerrero. We are based in Haltwhistle, close to the Cumbria/Northumberland border, in the heart of Hadrian's Wall Country. The business was established in 1994, when Martin graduated from London University's Wye College. Not really knowing what he wanted to do with his life, he decided to join his father and earn a crust doing gardening work for private clients in the immediate locality. After a few years, the realisation dawned that gardening is actually a very hard way to earn a living, especially with the sort of climate we have in this part of the world! At that time we attended an occasional craft fair, selling a few plants and also took along a few bird feeders that we had made. Having sold one or two feeders, the next step was to buy a sack of peanuts, and bag it down into smaller quantities. These also sold, and we started to wonder whether we could possibly set up a small round, delivering bird food door to door. We managed to track down a seed supplier who was prepared to sell to us a few sacks at a time, and we then put together a single sheet price list. This was put through the letterboxes of a number of houses in Brampton, and we were delighted to get a few customers. Things stayed at that point for a few years, until we became more and more disillusioned with gardening, and felt the time had come to bite the bullet and diversify. Over the last few years, we spent gradually more time and money on our bird food enterprise, and less time on gardening, until the time came in 2000 to say goodbye to gardening.
The last few years have been quite exciting and certainly challenging! In March 2001, we took the plunge and rented an industrial unit in Haltwhistle. Then, in July 2001, we took on a small dog food round, selling just one brand of food - FROMM. We later diversified further and moved into the wider pet foods market. Nowadays we stock virtually everything you need for all types of pets and livestock!
We're frequently asked about the origin of the name Poltross! At the bottom of our garden is a small stream - the Poltross Burn. Quite what Poltross means is not so straightforward - one theory is that it perhaps means 'Deep Pool'.