Hi everyone!
Well, we have left you alone through calving to take care of the real important farm duties! Driving around the country, spring is definitely in the air and the paddocks are full of happy healthy calves making for a fantastic quintessential Kiwi landscape!
We have been super busy too; the new Rotorua location is up and running and the team is REALLY enjoying all that space!
At Northland we keep pushing forward with a shiny new office block for our three salesmen, and we have a plan to give our showroom a facelift too. In addition to that, our love of concrete continues, and we have extended our yard to keep all our amazing new gear looking in tip-top shape.
At Morrinsville, we have updated the signage on the front of the building to keep it looking sharp and I think the concrete trucks are showing up there too! Matamata is about to get the same signage treatment and the boys have done a big spring clean ready for action.
As soon as this rain stops (as I look into the gloom outside) I’m sure many of you will be back out into the paddock to drop some grass and get into the harvest season. If you haven’t already, make sure you give your machinery a good look over or get our team to check it out for you so you don’t have any mishaps and if you need any blades, wrap, tines etc., see our parts departments and we will sort you out!
We will catch up soon and, in the meantime, enjoy the extra daylight hours as we get closer to Summer!
The team at PIAKO TRACTORS
Fendt 824 Profi Plus 4500hrs, located in our ROTORUA yard. Single owner, very well maintained. Front linkage and PTO with front remote, 600 front Tyres and 480 rear duals in great condition. GPS guidance included. The machine is front line worthy and ready to work.
In the last 10 years I think it would be fair to say that the agricultural machinery industry has seen some massive advancements in technology and some real forward thinking. But every now and again something pops up that makes you think “why hasn’t that been done before?” The Pottinger Flow Tast system is just one of those ideas
Recently we were lucky enough to travel to Austria to visit the main Pottinger factory there, and on our travels, it was obvious that the challenges we experience here in New Zealand with our undulating countryside are very similar in this part of Europe. In addition to the general terrain similarities, another challenge they experience over there is paddock damage from wild pigs! Driving around this was very evident but wasn’t exactly something that was an immediate consideration when you think about harvest time challenges.
Pigs aside (mostly) our heavy crops, rolling hills and loose soil types can create some real challenges during harvest season, particularly with implements like Rakes and Tedders that rely on wheels with a small diameter to help them float over less than ideal terrain.
It’s from these challenges the team at Pottinger has come up with a solution, something they have dubbed ‘Flow Tast’.
If you’ve operated a rake before, you can probably look at this and think ‘yeah, that makes sense!’ Looking at it, it appears to be quite a simple design. Take the wheels off from under the rotor and swap it out for a skid plate, or ‘Glide Bar’ as Pottinger call it which is a far more accurate description.
But the tricky part is, how do you make this be an option with longevity?
Well, these days that modern technology we were talking about earlier has the solution, in this case it’s a special grade of plastic called PE 1000.
Pottinger put a lot of R&D into the material used and the shape of the Glide Bar. The unit is made up of five replaceable sections, so if damage does happen to one of the 15mm thick plates you can replace them as required making it far more cost effective.
The whole system is managed by a hydraulic ram on each rotor which controls the ground pressure, set correctly it floats along with roughly 200kg of ground pressure making raking even in soft ground a lot easier in comparison to a standard wheel chassis. This control over ground pressure and the larger surface area of the glide bar means a lot less contamination. So not only are you putting your machine under less mechanical stress you’re improving the quality of your forage dramatically.
Checkout the video showing the Pottinger ‘FlowTast’ system in action recently in the Waikato. If this machine is something you want to see for yourself in action touch base with our sales team as we have a demonstrator machine available now!!