Scottish soil preparation equipment specialist ScanStone has launched its first potato harvester from the Potato Europe Event in Northern France.
Unveiling its new entry level ScanStone Patriot, the Forfar-based company said this latest harvester will offer users a large capacity cart elevator – ideal for large tonnage crops – but from a very competitive pricing structure.
The Patriot, which costs from £85,000, comes fully equipped with a haulm extraction system, followed by a four roller ‘Evolution’ cleaning system, purposely made for the machine and low maintenance costs as standard.
“There is a choice of either diablos or depth wheels for controlling the depth of the share,” said the company’s William Skea.
ScanStone, which is based at East Mains of Burnside, was established in 2004 to manufacture stone and clod separators as well as bed makers for root crop farmers.
Since then the company has added award-winning bed tillers to its range, with configurations of one, two and three bed options.
More recently, the ScanStone product range expanded toward vegetable windrowers, primarily for the potato crops – garnering much success with its two row windrower machine, which has enabled farmers to vastly increase harvesting capacity.
“As a natural progression to the windrowing machine, the all new ScanStone Patriot harvester maintains a gentle handling of the crop and has a large capacity cart elevator for crops with large tonnage,” added Mr Skea.
“This entry level potato harvester is simple in its design and has a great quality build structure – it is basic yet refined. Like the rest of the products in the ScanStone range, the Patriot is straightforward, effective and efficient. It has full belt drive.”
Looking forward, the company also intends to introduce a “bigger brother” harvester early next year, to offer a greater cleaning capacity and the options of a picking off table, digging web and land drive.
“This larger machine will be the Patriot 8,” said Mr Skea.
“It has been 28 years since company founder Gordon Skea was involved in the design of the Reekie 1500m harvester quickly followed by the famous Reekie Clean-Flow Harvester, both produced in Forfar.
“Now, in 2016, we are here again producing trailed potato harvesters, the only people in Scotland to do so and one of two companies working to product this equipment in the UK.”