Tractor, harvester IT comes of age
Over the last halfdecade, digital technology has appeared to be the “must-have” for tractor and machinery companies, who believe that bringing IT to tractors and farming will offer its customers huge benefits.
Factory sources suggest that all grassland machines manufactured at the Fella plant at the Feucht, Bavaria from Q2 2024 will be finished with Fendt or Massey Fergusn branding.
With this decision, AGCO - the parent company of Fendt and Massey, which bought the 100-year-old German mower, tedder and rake maker in 2011 - aims to strengthen its two core brands. It has already invested heavily at the site and in new product development.
"With the concentration of green fodder harvesting technology on our full-line brands Fendt and Massey Ferguson, as well as the ongoing investments, we are very well positioned to generate further significant growth in the future through out exclusiver Fendt and Massey Ferguson sales partners," says Jürgen Linder, vice president distribution management Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia.
The change at Fella follows a similar pattern to that of the Lely grassland division, which AGCO bought at the end of 2017. In 2019, the Lely name disappeared from mowers, tedders and rakes, and in March 2020, from round balers and loader wagons.
In other industry news, 14 years after unveiling the prototype at the German EuroTier livestock show in 2008, the Dutch manufacturer Schuitemaker has called full-time on its autonomous Innovado feeding robot.
Initially fitted with a 6.0m3 tub and a 60hp Deutz engine, the machine was able to cut silage from the clamp, load additional feedstuffs, mix the contents and then feed them. Over time, a more powerful 80hp JCB engine and a larger 8.0m3 tub machine was on display at EuroTier 2014.
After eight years of field tests and more than 20,000 hours of operation, the first five commercial versions were built in 2016, with Schuitemaker staff confident of a bright future for the autonomous feeding system. The demise of the project appears to have begun following the merger of Schuitemaker and Veenhuis in 2019, when the focus switched to the main product lines of slurry tankers and forage wagons, leaving no room for Innovado in the product portfolio.
