It is unlikely to come to Europe, but Grimme’s North American subsidiary Spudnik has built its first self-propelled potato harvester. The four-row Terratron 7040 prototype was previewed at the company’s recent open house.
Designed to fill a gap in the Grimme Group portfolio, the covers might be off the harvester but the technical details are still very much under wraps. All we can reveal is that the company plans to run the machine in southern regions of the USA this spring and then move north as the season progresses, to gain as much testing and proving as possible.
Based at Blackfoot (Idaho), Spudnik Equipment Co, as it is officially known, manufacturers windrowers (largest tackles eight rows at a time), and a monster 12-row planter. It also makes three-and four row trailed potato harvesters, and we can reveal that the Terratron is based on the four-row trailed flagship 6740, which can handle 16 to 20 rows at a time when paired with six or eight-row windrowers.
Developed to handle the large russet varieties common for processing in North America, we are informed that there is a lot of cleaning capacity on the self-propelled harvester to ensure it can work in areas with heavy soil conditions.
The name is interesting. ‘Tron’ was used on earlier self-propelled Grimme harvesters; such as the four-row Tectron (potatoes) and six-row Maxtron (sugar beet). The Terratron is certainly a good fit with the parent company’s current two-and four-row Varitron self-propelled potato harvesters.
We will have to wait for details of the 7040’s vital statistics, weight, power, potential output and availability, although the front-mounted engine is something you will be hard-pushed to find on another self-propelled potato harvester.
For more up-to-date farming news click here and subscribe now to profi for just £3.99 an issue.
