Potato Review

38 POTATO REVIEW SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 PROMOTIONAL FEATURE: COMPANY PROFILE Being a fully established crop storage engineering business for over 50 years, Farm Electronics’s reputation is built upon quality, e ciency and performace. C entrally located in the UK, on the outskirts of Grantham in Lincolnshire is home to our headquarters. e is where the administration, technical sales, fabrication, paint, manufacturing and service departments are based. Our technical sales team use the latest 3D and 2D design software to work with customers to discuss their requirements. Consultations with customers and 3rd parties are conducted on sites throughout the UK. We are the market leaders in designing and manufacturing crop storage systems for potatoes, onions, other vegetables and grain. We specialise in refrigerated cooling, ventilation and automated electronic control systems for the agricultural industry. In 2016 the company was bought by the Dutch owned Tolsma-Grisnich Group which allowed the company to increase its product portfolio into grading equipment as well as taking Dutch storage techniques and applying them into the UK marketplace. We have a close relationship with our customers which keeps us right at the forefront of industry technical developments. In recent times we have released a new version of our popular Cropscan Touchscreen 12” Controller. Bene ting from in-house software design, Farm Electronics is able to tailor the controller to the customers needs quickly and e ciently. Working now on a PLC format, the controller futureproofs the hardware, as software can be updated just like any smartphone or PC. It has also been designed to easily replace any previous versions of the Cropscan, keeping all the same connectors. It possesses the ability to connect to the internet giving the customer the ability to access the store remotely via a free app that can be downloaded to a smartphone, tablet or PC. is opens up a lot of capabilities with the controller for instance, e-mail alerts, e-mail reports, datalogging and remote control of the store. Due to the ban on CIPC, customers have been turning to other sprout suppressants which require the store to be sealed up for a longer period of time, to balance this with the need to keep CO to a minimum, we are able to o er a CO sensor which plugs into the Cropscan Controller and gives the customer the ability to set a high and low limit set point. When the CO hits the high limit set point, a store purge program runs until the CO hits the low limit set point. Another recent development has been the research and development of an automated hatch design. e hatch, designed to sit within a store wall simply by xing the external ange and wiring the toothed actuator, o ers unrivalled performance together with simplicity. Another bonus to the new design is the rain/light lter which is encased within the design for customer piece of mind when the hatch is open. e 80mm insulated panel o ers protection from the higher temperature di erences when storing for longer periods and the versatility of the design to make it open outwards or inwards depending on the store design makes it a truly great development. It’s now four years since Farm-Electronics became a subsidiary of the Dutch Tolsma-