| The Plantma Forestry team is growing! At the start of the planting season, Christer Larsson joined the team as Product Manager. After working for Caterpillar Forestry for 20 years, Christer is very experienced in various heavy machinery applications all over the world and has done a great job on fine tuning the machine together with the engineering team. He is now also a skilled operator of the machine and will be in charge of adapting it to local conditions and training operators, setting up support and parts procedures etc. During the season we have started up a North American operation, together with our good friends at SFE, Scandinavian Forestry Equipment (https://scandforestry.com/) The North American operations will be run by David Crouch, based in Alabama. Among other things in forestry and heavy machinery David has been working across the world with Christer over the years and has now spent the summer in northern Sweden operating the Plantma X together with Christer to get to know the product and identify any adaptions to the requirements for the North American market. David is now back in the US preparing for trials scheduled for this winter in the southeast part of the US.More information on the team members available on the website https://plantmaforestry.com/about-us/ |
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| Planting season 2021 The planting season 2020 was a great success and all the basic functionality was thoroughly tested in field. During the winter, some parts were replaced and redesigned based on the findings during the first season. The focus in 2021 has been to fine tune the software and the operation of the machine to give the best possible quality for the Swedish seedlings and forest conditions. For this reason the forest companies Sveaskog, SCA and Holmen have agreed on a unified system for follow up and together with Skogforsk a standardized test area has been planted at each location for long term follow up. We are about to finish this project and the machine is now ready to go to work for real. As part of this fine tuning, a number of new functions have been developed:More communication between the MidiFlex scarifier and the planting arms. Depending on the conditions, the MidiFlex and the planting arms are set to a preferred setting, and when the conditions change it’s now more easily adjusted. With just the press of a button the scarifier changes to matching settings and the planting arms adjust themselves accordingly on the fly. If the scarifier runs into big rocks or stumps etc that forces it to lift, the arms will not try to plant a seedling where no scarification is done. It is now also possible, where ground conditions allow, to use intermittent scarifying and plant in each spot leaving the ground unaffected between the spots. A video of this is available on Instagram and Facebook. www.instagram.com/plantmaforestry www.facebook.com/plantmaforestry Apart from the new functionality we have been working on the speed of planting. Moving continuously forward in good conditions with no obstacles and short distance between the seedlings we have been able to reach 3125 plants/hour! (2,5 km/h travel speed and 1,6 meters between the seedlings) |
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| Visits to the machine For the next couple of weeks we will be operating near Lycksele in the north of Sweden. The last week of operation will most likely be week 36, September 9th or so. If you want to see the machine in the forest, this will be the last chance for a while. When we are done in Lycksele we will be moving the machine to the workshop to prepare for shipping to the US. These are special times when it comes to international travel, but if you want to pay a visit to the machine, let us know and we’ll do what we can to make it happen. |
| Future There is a lot of interest in our Plantma X from all over the world and we are currently working on a number of projects. As mentioned above, the Plantma X will travel to the southeast US for the winter and David is working out the plan together with local seedling nurseries and land owners. Apart from this we are working towards producing a number of planters to be fit on various carriers in different parts of the world.There’s a lot of work to be done, but we are a very determined and dedicated team with great support from local representatives and together we look forward to “Planting the forests of tomorrow”If you have any questions or wish to discuss about your specific conditions, don’t hesitate to contact us. info@plantmaforestry.com www.plantmaforestry.com Sign up for the newsletter on the website footer. |
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