Innovation key to Krone success in manufacturing
The visit highlighted a role played by Ireland in making Krone one of the top rated farm machinery manufacturers in Europe for innovation.
Through its long-standing relationship with Farmhand, exclusive importers here for Krone machines, the company has used Ireland’s intensive grass production as a testing ground.
Once a well-known plough manufacturer, with 150,000 units sold, and the maker of more than 200,000 Optimat manure spreaders, Krone left those successful product areas behind in the 1990s, to become the only global grass, hay and forage machinery specialist.
Krone’s green and beige-painted mowers, tedders, rakes, balers, forage wagons and harvesters are market leaders in various countries.
The 108-year old company had 2012-13 annual sales of €564 million in its agriculture division, following steady turnover growth from about €300m in 2006/7.
Krone have been in ireland since 1962 , setting up Farmhand as a 50/50 operation with the Scrivener family. Through Farmhand — now 100% controlled by the Scrivener family — Krone has tested many of its innovations in Ireland’s heavy grass crops, particularly the Safe-Cut feature on the company’s wide range of mowers.
This Irish idea, developed in Ger many, features on many of the 13,000 cutterbars manufactured each year at Krone’s Spelle headquarters in north west Ger many. SafeCut features a tension pin which breaks when the disc hits the kind of obstacle sometimes found in Irish grass fields, like a rock outcrop.
This award-winning idea allows the disc thread its way up the drive shaft and clear out of the way of its neighbouring discs, which continue spinning without damage.
The tension pin can be replaced within 10 minutes, having prevented a much more lengthy and costly repair.
Krone balers in Ireland carry a heavy duty, all-weather net wrap system, specially designed for Ireland, and have heavier elevator belts, bearings and drive shafts.
Features like hydraulic cut height control in trailed mowers, and variable speed conditioner rotors, were perfected in Ireland.
The switch to grassland has been one of the many shrewd moves by Bernard Krone in his 50 years in charge at Krone until 2010, when his son, also Bernard, took over.
Mr Krone senior anticipated the rise of agricultural contractors in the EU, long before it happened. He predicted the “traditional” workforce would shrink on farms, and made the decision to design machines with not just farmers, but also contractor-users in mind. Now, 80% of the heavily mechanised work, such as silage making, is done in the EU by contractors — and 70% of Krone’s sales are to contractors.
Under Bernard Junior, now in his 30s, forward thinking continues, with Krone investing €26.4m per year in innovation. and 20% of the staff working at developing and testing new machines.
New machines like the CombiPack, back in the late 1990s), which was tested in heavy grass crops in Ireland in the summer of 1999, under the supervision of Bernard Krone junior. This was the first combination baler-wrap-per, an area pioneered by Krone, and now important for all baler manufacturers. Krone continues to set the pace in baler-wrapping; their non-stop Ultima baler is the world’s first to continue collecting crop while a finished bale is transferred to the wrapping unit.
Other recent award-winning Krone innovations are balers which weigh the fodder, and laser directed forage harvester spouts. The direction of innovation, says Division Sales Manager Henrik Feldmann, responds to farmers and contractors seeking greater efficiency and quality in round balers, along with non-stop operation and plastic wrapping, clean-working cutterbars for faster re-growth, and reduced running costs in general.
He says Krone’s specialisation in grass reflects the importance of dairy farming in Germany — even though he admits the dairy slump in 2009 was a setback for sales, and he estimates German farmers need a milk price 10-15% higher than Ireland to make money.
Feldmann says a global upward trend in grassland, with China figuring prominently, helps boost Krone sales, making up for a decrease in Germany as the country’s farm biogas boom moved into pasture land. But Krone was well placed for this land use change, as the number of biogas plants increased to about 7,500. The company’s 780 horsepower V-12 powered harvesters have cut a lot of maize for biogas, and high density Big Pack square balers also found a market in this area.
The company sells more than 28% of turnover in Germany. In the 72% export business, the relatively small Irish market doesn’t figure prominently in the statistics; however, Ireland has the distinction of being Krone’s No 3 home market for the Big M self-propelled mower-conditioner, after Germany and the US. Ireland takes about 10 per year, out of total annual sales of about 100 per year, most of which stay in Germany or go to the US. Farmhand say there are up to 150 Big Ms in Ireland.
Big Ms set world records back in 1999, for productivity in one hour (15.2 hectares) and in 24 hours (315 ha). Record-breaking performance has also been claimed for the Comprima F baler, producing 149 round bales per hour.
¦ Stephen Cadogan took part in a visit to the Krone HQ in Germany organised by Farmhand and two of their local dealers, Paudy Buckley, Vicarstown, Co Cork; and Dennis O’Connor Tractors, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry.
