CTM cleaner loader saves the day (and the frost damaged crop)
Pre-cleaner prove a match for damaged beet
Abbot’s Ripton Farming Co grows around 750 acres of sugar beet mainly on fen land between Ramsey and Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.
They had successfully lifted all but 100 acres when the severe weather arrived before Christmas. “Another week to ten days, and we would have been finished” explains Paul Drinkwater, estate agronomist. In reality he was caught out like most large growers.
By January frost damage was widespread and hauliers were experiencing a high level of load rejection at British Sugar’s Wissington factory. Growers were facing the prospect of heavy losses, in ARFCo’s case up to £65,000 and, as Paul points out, it was not just the potential loss of beet income but also the cost of two way haulage and the time consuming inconvenience of ploughing in the crop.
Fortunately his harvesting contractors and hauliers have many years of experience in handling beet in all conditions and came up with the solution: Graham Fowler & Sons realised that if they set their harvester’s topper to double topping, first taking the leaves away and then cutting lower to remove the frost damaged crowns, the damaged part would be removed. Unfortunately the crowns could not be expelled from the harvester without loss of smaller beet onto the field.
Fortunately, Vic Shaw of Knowles Transport who operates their CTM 9001 cleaner loader and shovel was able to reset the spring loaded ‘nose’ rollers on his Pre-cleaner to allow the crowns to drop through as they pass from the hopper to the Pre-cleaner unit. Obviously there would be some loss of small beet but the result would be clean, healthy loads for the factory.
And so it has proved. Sixty five acres into the ‘condemned’ crop, only four loads had been rejected at time of writing. “The Pre-cleaner on the CTM have really proved the value in these conditions” says Paul.
The 9001 model operated by Knowles has seen plenty of action over six campaigns cleaning and loading between 100 and 120,000 tons per campaign!
