U.K. award for local plough disc

Press, 14 February 1986, Page 12

U.K. award for local plough disc

A small North Canterbury engineering business has won a prestigious Royal Agricultural Society of England award for a plough attachment that it has developed and patented in 34 countries. The award and others will be presented at the Royal Show to be held from June 30 to July 3. The Strawbury plough disc developed by Henry Engineering of Loburn, and manufactured and marketed under licence in Britain by Smallford Planters, Ltd, has gained an Award of Merit. It signifies a machine has been “found reliable by users and that it should be

included by a potential buyer in his list of possibilities.” As the name suggests, the Strawbury disc is an adaptation to facilitate improved ploughing of straw stubble and similar material. The principal of Henry Engineering, Mr Newton Henry, is enthusiastic about the future and the merits of his disc ploughing adaptation. He believes that it solves all the old objections to the ploughing in of straw stubble. Use of the disc overcomes the need for burning off before ploughing, said Mr Henry. This had

contributed to the growing acceptance of the Strawbury disc in Britain, where difficulty was encountered with burning off because of pollution. The disc unit could be made to fit any mouldboard plough, including reversibles and low trailing ploughs, said Mr Henry. A Strawbury plough layered the stubble just 50mm to 75mm under the ground in such a way that bacteria and water could get in to aid decomposition. This was what had so impressed the English arable farmers and what had caused the Smallford Planter Company to take up the idea for development there, said Mr Henry. Another advantage was that the self-aligning disc required less power than conventional units, resulting in a saving of fuel.

The Royal Agricultural Society award is not the first award that the Strawbury disc adaptation has taken. At the 1983 Canterbury Show it won a first prize and silyer medal, the only one given that year. Last year it gained an award at the New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek, Hamilton. The Strawbury disc is not Mr Henry’s first invention to gain an award. “I just like experimenting,” he said. He has satisfied himself by using the Strawbury plough to turn in stubble on his own land that the process is a viable alternative to burning off. Last season he ploughed

stubble and, although it was hot a wet winter, when the land was worked again this season there was no sign of the customary straw mat under the surface as it had rotted down.

Mr Henry said he was amazed himself with the capabilities of the plough. He had been invited by a farmer to tackle a metre high lupin crop. Even Mr Henry thought that would be too tough an assignment for his plough, but he showed on video the success of that operation and of turning in com stubble.

Getting to this stage with the Strawbury disc has been a costly project for Mr Henry and it will probably be some considerable time before he recovers the outlay. Patenting alone has cost him something like $71,000; then there are his other development costs; and untold hours of experimenting and trial and error before the- product was ready for marketing. To meet the costs, he had to realise some of his other assets.

However, sales are exceeding Mr Henry’s expectations. He had thought that he might sell 200 to 300 annually but since he first went on the market, at the Canterbury Show two years ago, he has sold more than 3000 in New Zealand. Now he feels that the disc conversion is on the verge of gaining widespread international acceptance. Towards the end of last year Mr Henry estab-

lished a market in Tasmania and he is now beginning on the Australian mainland. He has a growing market in Britain already and he hopes that will expand to Europe, through Smallford Engineering, which manufactures the discs for worldwide distribution. Henry Engineering manufactures the rest of the adaptation kit for the Australasian market.

The major problem encountered by Mr Henry was in being too conservative in his initial orderings of discs for the Australasian market.

He began by ordering them from Smallfords and springs from a Christchurch company in lots of 200 or 300, but now he has stepped this up to 1000-unit lots to try to get ahead of orders. He has only just managed to get a reserve stock of about 40. So far Mr Henry has had no call to supply replacement discs for breakages, although one farmer took the precaution of ordering five spares.

Mr Henry attributes the lack of breakages to the discs being spring loaded, allowing them to ride over heavy obstructions such as large boulders. Mr Henry spent six weeks in Britain in 1984 to launch the project and after being home for only a month he returned to demonstrate the plough at the World Ploughing Championships in Britain. Mr Henry and his plough won a special competition for straw incorporation.