In the UK, Yorkshire manufacturer Grange Machinery, whose products are distributed by Carrfields in NZ, has updated the design of its 6m Close Coupled Toolbar (CCT), which will be launched at this week’s Agritechnica 2025.
Designed to be mounted between the tractor and following implement such as a power harrow, cultivator or drill, the CCT is used to loosen soil at depth before the main implement passes over the loosened ground.
Responding to requests from farmers, who typically need a traditional 50cm soil spacing during harvest, but also drill maize and other row crops at 75cm in the spring, the current version has 50cm tine spacing. The latest version is configured with additional brackets that enables users to alter the spacings of the low disturbance legs to 75cm.
Grange Machinery claims that, combined with a mounted or trailed drill, the 6m CCT enables the removal of soil compaction and the precision drilling of maize in a single pass. The company also notes that while sowing maize in 75cm rows is becoming more common, the standard 50cm version did not appeal to growers with cereal crops and maize – an increasingly popular combination thanks to an increase in anaerobic digesters.
The 6m CCT is designed to operate with mounted and trailed implements and is fitted with a power take-off (PTO) transmission to allow the use of powered cultivators or drills. Its versatility also includes shallow subsoiling, correcting compaction in pre-drill and post-harvest passes, or, when combined with a packer roller, can create an ideal pre-drilling seedbed in one pass.
