PMC | veritable vegetables

off highway machines, Agriculture

Mark Humphrey

Area Sales Manager South East, KTR UK

According to experts, peas and beans will play a decisive role in future nutrition. This small but mighty duo are rich in proteins, easy to cultivate and harvest, filling and wholesome meat substitutes. Because legumes are multi-talents and their contribution as future nutriments of great importance, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) dedicated a whole year to them, declaring 2016 the “International Year of Pulses”. The objective of sensitising the public at large to the health and ecological benefits of legumes clearly bore fruits: “In the four years between 2013 and 2017, 27,058 new products containing pulses – peas and beans, soya and lupins – were launched onto the global market” according to the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. In other words, the bean is booming.

So as to promote this upswing – by offering the simple legume as a sustainable form of nutrition and being able to move produce from the field via the market to the consumer – agriculture needs to be both efficient and technologically sophisticated and use machinery that is productive and reliable right from the start of the agricultural value-added chain.

PMC Harvesters Ltd has been developing, manufacturing and selling such equipment in Fakenham, East England for almost half a century – since 1970 – including self-propelled harvesters to gather potatoes, peas, field beans, soya and green beans. Their latest model, the ‘Pea and Broad Bean Harvester 1189’, is suitable for gathering green peas as well as borlotti, flageolet and broad beans.

The 1189 features four-wheel steering enabling easier manoeuvrability and gentle cultivation, a threshing system with five rotors and a comfortable CLAAS VISTA CAB. And what comes out at the rear? A harvest yield, for example that will fill 8.5 million packets full of peas over a six-week period. And what is to be found inside? A BoWex-ELASTIC HE curved-tooth gear coupling between a Scania six-cylinder DC13 diesel engine with 330 kilowatt and the transfer case. So as to make the harvester as multifaceted as possible, the transmission operates hydraulic pumps for the hydrostatic drives which give the PMC 1189 its variable speed versatility. The highly flexible flange coupling is precisely designed for the harvester’s most diverse operating conditions while transmitting rated torques of up to 4,000 Nm, compensating for misalignment in the drive system and protecting against vibrations.

We use these couplings since 2013, building twelve to fifteen harvesters a year, and never had a failure.

The BoWex is not choosy which legumes come its way. Its key priority is to transfer power and by doing so, contribute towards a safe and speedy journey that the bean or pea needs to make from the fields to the kitchens of the world – and hence contribute towards a bigger boom.