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New Holland’s new CR 11 header in action.
Following much speculation, New Holland used last week’s giant Agritechnica event in Germany to finally show off its new flagship combine harvester.
The range topping colossus is a twin longitudinal rotor design, powered by a 775hp, C16 engine, named the CR 11. The new combine was designed and will be produced at New Holland’s Center of Harvesting Excellence in Zedelgem, Belgium – building on the company’s current flagship combine range, which is topped by the CR10.90.
The new combine is said to offer more productivity, close to zero losses, better and more efficient residue management and a significant reduction in downtime. New Holland says the overall objective is to reduce the total cost of harvesting to improve bottom line profitability.
Key features include twin 24-inch rotors, a 20,000-litre grain tank and a 210 litre/second unloading rate. Setting out to create a zero-loss machine, designers developed a double cleaning shoe. The new Twin Clean cleaning shoe comes with two cleaning systems behind each other, with 2 upper sieves, 2 lower sieves, 2 clean grain augers and 2 sets of pressure sensors to measure cleaning shoe load. The system is fully automated to guarantee even cross distribution of the cleaning shoe, for maximum capacity at loss levels close to zero.
A completely new residue management system comes with a new chopper and chaff spreader system. This is designed to ensure the best chop quality and even residue spreading over up to 60ft cutting width.
A new automated de-slug procedure was designed to reduce downtime when a blockage occurs. This has an automated procedure to guide the operator through an unplugging procedure in a way that clears the combine in minutes rather than hours – without requiring the operator to leave the cab.
Downtime prevention is also aided by the combine’s revised driveline simplicity. It has as much as 25% less drive components and with the elimination of all chain drives.
The CR11 comes with the new Intelliview 12 display and IntelliSteer guidance system, together with other essential precision farming functions, like Telematics and Remote screen viewing.
Additionally, NutriSense is equipped with a NIR sensor. This monitors crop quality via the use of near infra-red light to analyse nutrients like protein, starch and oil contents, plus moisture levels and can create maps of these for further agronomic analysis.
The CR 11 is also compatible with a new 15m (50ft) draper header manufactured by MacDon for New Holland, adding to the overall productivity and field efficiency gains.
Recognising the trends for reduced ground compaction in combination with transport width regulations, the CR11 offers a range of wider tracks and bigger tyres, up to 2.32m diameter in the case of the 900-65R46 option.
The market is in decline in the United States, Canada and Brazil. In Europe, sales are falling in Germany, France and Spain. Turkey is experiencing a sharp decline, whilst the economic strategies and policies implemented by India and China are driving purchases in both countries.
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