Seed Firm’s Move In Bulk Handling

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30146, 1 June 1963, Page 6

Seed Firm’s Move In Bulk Handling

A N interesting development in the field of bulk handling has been announced by Wright, Stephenson and Company in Christchurch. To enable farmer clients who handle grain in bulk to do the same with ryegrass and garden peas the firm is having plywood bins made which will be hired out to the farmer. Tire bins measure 6ft by 3ft Bin by 3ft and will hold the equivalent of 17 bags of garden peas or 60 bushels of ryegrass. For strength, the bins have angle metal strips at the corners. To facilitate handling the bins sit on a pallet which is part of the unit.

The bins will be set in the paddock where the farmer is harvesting and the header will unload directly into them. This will make bulk harvesting of ryegrass and garden peas a one - man job and will obviate the need for bagging these crops on the farm where they are handled in bulk. The bins will each have lids and will be watertight so that once inside seeds will be safe from the weather and there will be no need for their immediate removal from the harvest paddock.

Bins will be moved into the company’s store at Princess street, Addington, either on farmers’ own trucks or on transport operators’

trucks. A fork-lift will be needed to lift the bins on to a truck deck. Ait the store in Addington the bins will again be handled by fork-lift. This will speed up the turn-round of transport at the store considerably. The bins will be stacked awaiting machine dressing, when they will be tipped mechanically into the hopper of the seed-dressing machines. A prototype bin has been filled and handled at the store and subjected to the maximum weight that would be exerted in the stack and it has come through all these tests satisfactorily. Seed coming off the dressing machines will, as in the past, be sacked for export or distribution in New Zealand.

A spokesman for the firm said that it was expected that about 500 bins would be available for use by the firm’s clients next harvest. As bulk handling continued to expand, it was anticipated that the numbers of bins available would increase.

The spokesman said that, as with the bulk handling of grain, farmers would have to watch closely that seed was harvested only at safe moisture levels.

With each line being subject to test, in particular for germination, it would not be possible to store lines together in bulk as was the case ..with grain coming into a flourmiller’s store.