COMPANY FOCUS XXX
Building an empire
Swedish group SP
Maskiner is surging forth into a new period of growth armed with the world’s foremost harvester head for eucalyptus plantations. By Chris Cann
single-grip harvester head – a design that forms the basis of all modern harvester heads. That advantage has dissipated over the years as other manufacturers have copied and adapted the single-grip design for their own requirements but SP has identified a new frontier and is blazing a trail with its heavy duty harvester heads that are ideal for the fast- growing eucalyptus markets in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Establishing a pedigree SP did not start out life as a harvester head manufacturer. In fact, the roots of the company began growing before the concept of a single cutting and processing system had been invented. Two Swedish gentlemen, Sandahl and Pedersen (hence ‘SP’) lead a small group providing service expertise to loggers for their harvesting machines, which at the time in 1978 consisted of separate felling machines and processing machines. That company rapidly grew into an engineering outfit that made improvements to both forwarders and so called two-grip harvesters. Anyone who was around in the late 1970s
will remember that there was a lot of talk about how to mechanise thinning operations following mechanisation in the clear-cutting space. SP recognised the opportunity and began working with harvesting companies on a prototype for a single-grip harvesting head that could mechanise thinning. That was 1980 and SP had invented the world’s first single-grip head, the SP 21. The Swedish group maintained its advantage
We are the original company behind this technique – Export Manager, Anders Gannerud
for many years but other manufacturers eventually cottoned onto the concept and started dedicating their own research and development expertise to not only making
similar machines but also altering designs in cooperation with their own clients to broaden the scope and variety of the heads that were offered. For SP, though it has lost its initial advantage, it maintains an edge over its competitors through the constant upgrades and breakthroughs made by a team of experienced engineers, most of whom were present when those first thinning heads were developed. “We are the original company behind this technique,” SP Export Manager Anders Gannerud told International Forest Industries. “Now of course our advantage we have is that a lot of the guys that were in the company in 1982-3 are still in the company as engineers.
451 LF in brief The SP 451 LF is a very fast and nimble harvester head that was launched in 2001 and is still widely sought after. It is designed according to the LF principle for maximum productivity. Low weight in combination with compact measurements ensures a simple positioning in dense stands and makes the SP 451 LF a perfect choice for first and second thinnings. The SP 451 LF reaches top performance in stands with a diameter of 100-250 mm (4-10 inch) dbh, but is also capable of efficiently working with larger tree sizes thanks to the LF principle. The SP 451 LF is in all respects a “big little harvester head”.
16 International Forest Industries | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011
ore than 30 years ago, SP Maskiner had a clear advantage over the competition as the inventor of the
The SP 591 LX is a heavy duty head designed specifically to take the punishment of eucalyptus harvesting
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