For growers by growers
From the outside it looks like a simple farmer’s shed …. But the outside is deceptive, because once inside we find ourselves in a fully equipped workshop. Somewhere in the middle of the machines we find Marco. He’s the man from the mechanisation company KoBo. This is the mechanisation company of Leuveld Nurseries.
Marco has been the technical man at Leuveld for years. From changing a tyre on a bus or tractor to developing a new machine, it’s all done from the same shed. Due to the
rapid development of the nursery, the demand for developing machines increased. In the beginning, this mainly involved adapting existing machines. Just a little adjustment to make it work just a little better, faster and easier. Marco came up with a solution together with the men from the nursery and what his eyes saw, his hands made.
Nowadays, it goes a bit further than that. Complete new machines are being developed. From the drawing board to testing and application in practice. “It can all be done in house and that is a huge advantage”, according Harald and Marco. They actually understand all aspects of the problem. They know how it works in the nursery but they also know what’s technically possible. This combination has proven to be extremely effective, because by now, a lot of machines have been built. A lot of machines for Leuveld’s own nursery but also a lot of machines that we’ve sold to fellow growers in the Netherlands and far beyond.
Robotics at Leuveld
Last year we started a whole new project. A secret and there’s still a lot of work to be done but…. Marco shows us around anyway. We’re working with a team of experts on an entirely autonomous cutting and chopping robot. We do a lot of cutting and trimming in the nursery. It’s physically demanding work and it’s very important for the quality of the plants that this work is always done on time. This just can’t be done by hand anymore and with the simpler machines we use now. So a solution had to be found.
The first ideas were developed together with Bart, Michel and Harald. It had to be a fully autonomous robot that can cut or round three rows of plants simultaneously. There’s still a lot of work to be done. A lot of hours of thought and development have gone into it, but the first results are very promising.
