Lely order book 'slightly better'
Dairy automation company Lely reported a 3.4% decline in total turnover last year but notes that sales are picking up.
Dairy automation company Lely says its new milking robot will be available in New Zealand within months.
The company last week launched the Astronaut A5 at its head office in Maassluis, the Netherlands, after 18 months of onfarm trials in five European countries, the US and Canada, involving over two million milkings.
Lely vice president sales, Gijs Scholman, says the plan is to have the robots in NZ “very soon”.
He says the A5 will be “somewhat higher priced” than its predecessor the Astronaut A4; Lely’s 180 independent Lely Centre owners determine the final selling price to farmers.
“Our Lely Centre operators actually market and sell machines; they will decide the final price to the farmer; we cannot interfere in that,” says Scholman.
“It is a fact that the Astronaut A5 has much extra functionality and reliability plus a much lower operating cost.”
The A5 has a new hybrid milking arm that is silent, faster, more energy efficient and more accurate, Lely says.
Post-milking teat spraying has been improved by pre-scanning the udder before spraying, ensuring optimal udder hygiene and limiting the risk of contamination.
A redesigned, intuitive user interface makes automatic milking easy to understand for everybody.
Lely, which celebrated it 70th birthday last week, unveiled its first Astronaut A1 robot 25 years ago.
Today at least 30,000 Lely robots are milking cows worldwide.
Lely chief executive Alexander van der Lely believes in a bright future for dairy farming, envisaging fully robotic dairy farms worldwide.
“In our vision, the fully robotic farm runs fulltime, 24 hours a day. Whether feeding, milking, cleaning or caring for animals, automation takes away repetitive work for the farmer, enabling him to focus on individual cows that really need his attention.”
Profitability issues facing arable farmers are the same across the world, says New Zealand's special agricultural trade envoy Hamish Marr.
Over 85% of Fonterra farmer suppliers will be eligible for customer funding up to $1,500 for solutions designed to drive on-farm efficiency gains and reduce emissions intensity.
Tighter beef and lamb production globally have worked to the advantage of NZ, according to the Meat Industry Association (MIA).
Groundswell is ramping up its 'Quit Paris' campaign with signs going up all over the country.
Some farmers in the Nelson region are facing up to five years of hard work to repair their damaged properties caused by the recent devastating floods.
Federated Farmers is joining major industry-good bodies in not advocating for the Government to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
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