Innovative machinery and equipment celebrated at LAMMA ’18
LAMMA 2018 was cut short by a day following a dramatic change overnight with violent winds battering the site before daybreak of the second morning.
Fortunately decisions over the LAMMA Innovation Awards had already been made on the opening day with the 80 entries forward reflecting the depth and breadth of innovation for which the agricultural sector is renowned.
The awards, sponsored by Firma Foreign Exchange and open to new products exhibited at the event, were split into five categories, judged on best product or innovation: Crop production equipment; Livestock equipment; Technological; Environmental; Farm Machinery and Equipment Innovation Award
The shortlist was judged by a panel of 10 experts aided by four students from the West Midlands selected by the West Midlands branch of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers.
The winners were :
Crop production equipment (The Loven Cup) – Halse South West , importer of machinery from Spanish manufacturer Ovlac, won this category with Ovlac’s Reptill, a multi-purpose short disc harrow designed to reduce the number of inter-row cultivations in vineyards.
The machine consists of two gangs of discs, between which are mounted a row of de-compacting, height-adjustable tines. It can cut roots and mulch while eradicating pans and improving drainage in one pass. An optional hydraulic headland frame lift for narrow headlands lifts the rear of the machine vertically towards the tractor.
Livestock equipment (Anne Armstrong Trophy) – Wessex international with the Wessex BFR-180, a modular feeding and bedding system that can be a configured as a bale feeder, a straw spreader and bale feeder combination or a bale feeder with an extension chute.
It can feed round bales of hay, haylage, straw and silage from either side with ease. With the Crossfire straw spreader attached, bedding and feeding tasks can be undertaken with the same machine, bedding from one side and feed off the other. The Wessex Sidewinder extension conveyor attaches to the BFR-180 for high level feeding.
Technological (LAMMA trophy) – Alltech & Keenan for the InTouch live nutrition service providing real-time diet support, providing a loading sequence and mixing process to generate consistent, accurate and optimum diet presentation.
InTouch enables rapid ration production, intake and production monitoring and control of feed and fuel costs.
Environmental (The IAgrE Ivel Award): Mzuri Pro-Til with the Pro-Til 3T Xzact which combines a striptill drill and a precision seeder in just one piece of equipment, capable of sowing into all types of arable and precision crops in a single pass.
The patented Xzact precision metering system is an optional extra that can be fitted to most Pro-Til strip till drills to provide non-stop precision seeding. The drill can just as easily be converted back into a standard Pro-Til striptill drill for crops such as wheat, oilseed rape and beans.
Farm Machinery and Equipment Innovation Award (Farmers Guardian Trophy) – Keith Mount Liming Ltd with the Phieldtek PCN210, an on-the-go soil sampling device designed to improve the quality of a PCN soil sample. The machine permits increased sampling intensity, collecting 210 cores of soil/ha rather than the standard 50 cores.
The PCN 210 extracts cores at around 3m intervals. The machine can be towed behind a quad at speeds up to 10mph. A spring-loaded auger is pushed into the soil to pick up a core. The core is then pushed into a collecting container, before springing back into position for the next sample. Each 1ha grid can be sampled without stopping.
The David Baggaley Trophy for best new product or innovation: Mzuri Pro-Till
