The Mayo town of Ballyhaunis is home to fertiliser spreader manufacturer Agri-Spread International. It builds a range of trailed fertiliser spreaders from a single-axle 3t machine up to a 25t tandem-axle spreader for the Irish and international markets.

Now on the market for over eight years, the machines can come standard with land-drive control system or a fully hydraulic GPS-controlled spreading system. What started with basic GPS control has now moved to full-scale product and disc-speed control, auto-shut off, headland/border management system and variable-rate spreading. This is available on a touchscreen controller or through the tractor ISOBUS portal.

Dynamic calibration

The trailed spreader has the option of being fitted with weigh cells and rate controller that work in conjunction with each other. The weigh cells can take a weight reading every five seconds while the spreader is in operation and use that reading against the amount of product that should have been spread.

The system then calculates how much it needs to be adjusted by and automatically makes that adjustment. There are also angle sensors built into the controller that allow the weigh cells to read down to 1kg accuracy on hilly ground and at speeds of up to 30km/h. This technology is very useful on products that change density throughout the load like “seconds” fertiliser.

Agri-Spread has been offering this weigh cell technology for over five years now and was the first trailed spreader manufacturer to offer this to the market with dynamic calibration.

This technology has broad appeal in countries such as Australia and America, where high operating speeds are common. Further development will see the release of the Agri-Spread section control machine which is currently on trial in several countries around the world.