14
THECOMMERCIAL GREENHOUSEGROWER • JULY 2017
• AUTOMATION
NEW TECHNOLOGY
OPENSUP INVESTMENT
Before looking at investing innew equipment, growers
need tomake sure that it will not onlymeet their needs
and expectations, but also fit into their overall production
system. “Seeding and transplantingmay seem relatively
easy to automate, but growers need to change their
business culture to implement them to thebest effect,”
explainsRichard. “Themain issues are scheduling and
technical expertise. Scheduling is an issuewhich canbe
overcomeby experience, but the grower needs tohave
the right staff toget thebest out of anymachine.
“Alongside growing skills, they need somebasic technical
skills, which are often harder learnt. Themore automated
a nursery becomes, themore important it becomes to
have the right staff trained to copewith the technical
challenges.Most of our customers embrace this, but
some think that automation is a ‘silver bullet’ that will
streamline their productionwith no additional input, and
this isn’t the case.”
When considering automation, growers need to know
their costs stresses IanThornhill of Hortec. “There is
littlepoint in investing in thewrong sort of automation,”
hepoints out. For example, installing a highoutput
transplanter, but not adding suitable fillingmachinery for
the trays, or usingpoor quality plugswith low rates of
plant viability canprevent any benefits beingdelivered.
“In some cases the time spent ‘gapping up’ is sogreat
that hand transplantingwould actually be faster,” he
comments. “If growers really know their costs, including
the cost of hand transplanting then the investment
decisionbetweenhandormachine transplantingbecomes
easy.”
Theremay be other barriers to increasedoutput which
need tobe considered. “It is very easy to say ‘we only
Almost any process in the nursery or greenhouse canbe
automated to some extent, from seeding andpotting,
to complex systems formovingplants around and even
harvesting. On topof this,most environmental controls
andmany irrigation systems are automated to some
degree.
However, because of themany different processes
involved indifferent types of commercial horticulture,
and thewide range of crops andmarkets supplied, there
aremany growerswho couldmake use of increasing
automation, as recent levels of investment by the industry
indicate.
“With the uncertainty of Brexit and theweak pound
against the eurowe had thought that sales this spring
might be slow, but on the contrary sales across theboard
havebeen strong,” reportsPhillipAshtonof horticultural
machinery supplier Rotomation (UK) Ltd. “Growers
seem to have had a reasonable twelvemonths and there
certainly seems no lack of confidence in investing in
equipment. Possibly theprospect of increased labour cost
and the uncertainty over access tomigrant labourmay
have ledgrowers to look to automate.”
Demand for new equipment appears tobe coming from
across theboard, from nurseries that are automating for
the first time togrowerswho are upgradingor boosting
existing transplanting lines. “We are experiencing
strongdemand for transplanters for thebeddingplant
industry,” explainsPhillip. “We have already installed
four transplanters so far this year andwe currently have
another three onorder. These have ranged from small six
headed free-standingmachines, up to fully automatic lines
with capacity for 30 heads.”
Other equipment suppliers tell a similar story. “We have
seen a fairly constant demand for transplanters in the last
few years, but there seems tobe a resurgence of growers
wanting toget back into sowing their own trays, having
previously switched tobuyingpre-grownplugplants,”
agreesRichardHamiltonof HamiltonDesign. He adds
that thedemand for seedingmachinery has also risen
over the last 2-3 years from theUK andoverseasmarkets
formicro-herbproduction. “This seems tobe a rapidly
expanding sector of themarket, and there is particular
interest from indoor vertical farmingoperations,” he adds.
JavoRotofill trayfiller.
