Farming smarter with technology
The National Fieldays is an annual fixture in the farming calendar: it draws in thousands of farmers, contractors, and industry professionals from across the country.
The key to the program is having specialist resources working with the customer in their own machine, harvesting their crop, providing education and assistance to get peak operational performance from the advanced features of their combine.
“Our goal is to support our customers to be successful, which means not only selling them world-leading products but providing them with support and training to get the full benefit of this purchase, including early preparation with parts and service that maximises their harvest up-time,” says Richard Wilson, chief executive.
The optimisation specialists are well travelled, spending nine months of the year travelling the world carrying out optimisations. They are exposed to a wide variety of crops and conditions, which helps build their knowledge and addresses the specific needs of Claas combine customers. In turn, the optimisation drivers identify local farmers’ needs and practices, which are provided back to Claas in a two-way feedback loop, ensuring ongoing product research and development.
“If a customer in New Zealand is having challenges with their machine in a specific crop, chances are that the specialists have encountered this scenario before and can apply those learnings to the New Zealand customer. Combine harvesters or headers are machines that are not driven all year round, and it’s understandable that both the machine and its operators can be a little rusty,” says Richard.
Agri Experts optimisation drivers Jelle Jensema and Sebastian Erkel, both from Germany, have completed optimisations in Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“The technology Claas has released in their combine harvesters is particularly valuable for farmers in this part of the world, and by seeing it in action here, we can really push the technology to its limits and help farmers get more out of their combines and more out of their crops in a working day”, says Jelle Jensema.
The optimisation specialists work with the customer to understand what is important to their business. Whether that is throughput, quality of their grain, understanding grain losses, exploring crop types, or how to utilise the advanced features of their machine. During their time in NZ, the drivers will also demonstrate the latest Claas Lexion 8800 combine harvester.
