Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 43 MACHINERY Wolds finds solution for multiple sites UK potato supplier Wolds Produce has invested in a new mobile washing facility, featuring Tong’s next generation barrel washer to increase throughput and provide more flexibility. Based in East Yorkshire, Wolds Produce Ltd supplies to the crisping, chipping, ware, catering and seed industries, working with a wide base of UK growers. In order to wash crop across multiple sites, the company needed a mobile washing system that would bring effective destoning, washing and inspection of crop at high capacities, for quick yet gentle processing to meet contract demands. Featuring the latest model of Tong’s popular potato barrel washer, the new mobile washing system is built to handle high throughputs of crop, with a 4m long, 1200m wide barrel washer and integrated destoner for removal of stones from crop prior to washing. Once crop is washed, it is gently transferred to an inspection conveyor with canopy. For ultimate ease of transporting between sites, the mobile system has been designed with foldable modules to allow the machine to be quickly and easily adapted for transport. Managing Director at Wolds Produce, Simon Tootell, said: “The machine can run with minimal labour requirements and is making it possible for us to respond quickly to new contract requirements as we can now wash to high standards on location across our wide grower base.” 20,000th milestone FIVE years after launching its first connected agri-weather station, providing farmers with precise local data for temperature, humidity, wind speed and rainfall, Sencrop has sold its 20,000th station in Europe. First Dewulf Enduro in the field FOLLOWING its online unveiling at the end of 2020, the first Dewulf Enduro is now out and working in the field. The four-row potato harvester on wheels is a powerful harvester that its manufacturers say excels in product friendliness, capacity and ease of operation. In terms of soil pressure, the Dewulf Enduro boasts maximum statistics of 1,8 kg/m² thanks to Soil-Saver technology. The harvester has no restrictions along its sieving webs to provide optimal sieving capacity throughout the machine. The driver can easily and steplessly adjust the angle of the cleaning module between 0° and 12°, based on the amount of cleaning required in the field. In addition to this, the module with axial rollers can be bypassed at any incline angle for greater flexibility. The unique ring elevator (Fill-Tastic) combines capacity with product-friendliness. The ring elevator has a high capacity of 200 tons/h and achieves this at a very ‘potato- friendly’ speed, which is automatically regulated via a sensor. The two-part bunker and discharge elevator, with a practical volume of 10 tons, is the largest in its sector. Patents revoked after manufacturer sued STRIP tillage seed drill manufacturer, Claydon Yield-o-Meter Limited, has lost a high court battle against Mzuri Ltd, in which it claimed that Mzuri’s popular Pro-Til and Pro-Til Select single pass drills infringed its UK patent no. 2,400,296 and European patent no. 2,051,576. At trial, Mzuri maintained there was no infringement of the claimant’s patents, which it said were invalid and a judge ruled that the patents are to be revoked owing to a combination of a lack of inventiveness over existing prior art and prior use of the invention in public. The patents related to the configuration of inline tines for cultivating and seeding in one pass, which is a concept that Mzuri believes dates to the earliest seed drills in history. Speaking for Mzuri, Martin Lole said he hoped growers who had been deterred from buying a Mzuri Pro-Til for risk of infringing patents, would regain their confidence. “We have been disappointed to have been the target of a court case brought about by another British manufacturer, which sought to claim damages and prevent us from selling our flagship product into the market,” he said. “Single pass technology, such as one tine in front of another has been around for many years, even documented by early innovators such as Jethro Tull, and has been popular (particularly in the US) for some time prior to the patent priority date. We have always maintained that we do not infringe the Claydon patents, and it is very sad that this whole thing, which has been entirely unnecessary, could have been easily avoided.” Four new grading lines on 21st anniversary HAITH marked 21 years of working with R S Cockerill in August, an anniversary that coincided with the completion of a £3m investment into the Yorkshire potato grower and packer’s site in Dunnington, near York. The latest project – the installation of four new grading lines, has been part-funded by an EU Productivity Grant and is the 42nd order that R S Cockerill has awarded to Haith. Each of the new lines features a Haith rota-tip box tippler, washer and destoner, polisher and direct drive dryers. Haith also integrated Key Oculus optical sorters, Newtec 4015 weighers, GIC vertical form fill and seal packaging machines, and LAN robots at the end of the line.