COMPANY FOCUS
Heading south for the winter One of the most exciting opportunities identified has been the burgeoning eucalyptus plantations that dominate the Southern Hemisphere. SP had seen an opportunity to serve the eucalyptus markets – primarily in Spain, Portugal and South Africa– in the mid- 90s and after initial visits began supplying those markets with its European heads designed for softwood. Most head manufacturers did likewise. It was with the support of Weland and in consultation with its eucalyptus client base that it began to develop the first purpose-built head for eucalyptus harvesting in 2005. “Based on the growth rate of eucalyptus plantations we recognised the opportunity early,” Gannerud said. “Because we’d been working with these clients for more than 10 years we were able to ask them about the problems and deficiencies with the softwood heads they’d been using and therefore attempt to solve all those problems.”
On examination, the priorities of those using the heads were clear: higher uptime, more reliability and better debarking. These were where bottlenecks had been developing in these operations. The answer SP came up with was the SP 591 LX. “We had to redesign everything
from scratch. The components of the 591 LX are all very heavy duty. Eucalyptus harvesting often involves a lot of sand and sap from the trees and so we need a head that can withstand a lot of wear and tear. Apart from that, the head is also very bulky and is designed for the tracked carriers in the eucalyptus sector. “The components are bigger and stronger, such as pins and bushes that are more heavy duty and are also completely sealed off with a specially designed seal system that has proven to give a uniquely long lifetime. For example, the pins on the 591 LX that go through the knives and the roller arms can be adjusted after a couple of thousand hours so you don’t have to change them – they are completely sealed off
The SP 591 LX on a Volvo 210 in South America
against sand, dirt and debris.
“We found we can take apart a head after 10,000 hours and the pins still look like new. There are normally a lot of replacements on the large pins but we’re getting 20,000 hours out of them, which is unique. It’s a real heavy duty strong head built for minimal maintenance because these guys are running 7,000 hours/year and so can’t be replacing pins and bushes every couple of months.” The heavy duty design does not make the head cumbersome. On the contrary, the hydraulics and feed system mean the maximum processing speed is an impressive 8 m/s.
591 LX in brief The SP 591 LX is an extremely strong and tough harvester head, designed according to the LX principle for maximum reliability and productivity even under the toughest conditions. In spite of its brutish appearance, the SP 591 LX does not just offer strength and reliability. Smart solutions like proportional pressures, the SP patent LogHold and QuickCut also makes the SP 591 LX a very fast, efficient and an ‘easy-to-work-with’ harvester head – the SP 591 LX truly is a high speed powerhouse for extreme jobs. The SP 591 LX can be equipped with a very efficient debarking function. The combination of
robust LX design and high speed feeding makes the SP 591 LX a perfect choice for harvesting and debarking of eucalyptus plantations.
18 International Forest Industries | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011
The SP 561 LF felling pine
“The unique features of this head are the speed, low maintenance and the heavy duty nature – this doesn’t exist in any other product.”
In 2007, the first SP 591 LX eucalyptus
heads were taken to SP’s “home away from home”, South Africa, where the company had been working since 1994. A trial period was completed under the watchful eye of an engineering and service team before the first commercial 591 was released onto the market. As a testament of the durability of this model, the 591 prototypes are still in operation after more than 25,000 hours. It wasn’t until more than 10,000 hours had been clocked up in South Africa that SP felt comfortable turning its attention to the potentially much larger market in South America. “We always considered South America
as an opportunity that should be prioritised but we needed a development and strategy plan,” Gannerud said. “The SP 591 LX had been running for 18 months before we started looking at dealers in South America – it’s a long process to get the numbers through on a tester product before it’s launched into new markets. “We started in Chile in partnership with the
Volvo dealer SKCM. It took about a year for us to establish ourselves including finding and training their support and sales team. We did very well in Chile and so went into Uruguay, Argentina and most recently started doing field tests in Brazil.” Gannerud said very little was likely to change in the head for the Brazilian market but it was still important to run it on Brazilian plantations to collect the numbers necessary to prove how effective it would be for those who bought it. There is an issue with serviceability for many manufacturers who use dealers in South America in terms of parts availability but Gannerud said SP had gone to great lengths to ensure SKCM was well-trained and that there was always a complete stock so parts availability was 100%.
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