The McHale Fusion 3 Plus has received a number of prestigious awards at farm machinery shows across Europe since it launched at the Agritechnica Show in Germany in 2013.

The integrated bale wrapper is unique in that the bale is wrapped in the bale chamber with plastic instead of traditional netwrap. After the bale is transferred to the vertical wrapping ring, additional film is applied to the ends. Across Europe, this process is being referred to as film-on-film technology.

In February, the Fusion 3 Plus received an award for innovation at the FIMA Show in Zaragoza, Spain. In June, the machine received an award at Cereals 2014 in Cambridgeshire, England.

This month, McHale received its third prestigious award for the machine at the Royal Highland Show held in Edinburgh, Scotland.

McHale claims that film-on-film technology provides a number of advantages compared to the traditional method of netwrap. These advantages include the fact that the bale chamber film acts as a wrapping layer.

The plastic is added in place of the netwrap to the barrel of the bale and holds the bale together during the bale transfer. Once the bale is transferred to the wrapper, the plastic used to hold the bale together forms part of the wrapping layers. McHale claims that this adds value as there is more plastic applied to the largest surface of the bale than with traditional methods.

When plastic is applied to the barrel of the bale, it can be stretched to approximately 20%. This stretch ratio is higher than what can be achieved with net wrap or twine. McHale claims that as a result, the material is kept tighter which ultimately results in better bale shape.

As the plastic is being stretched as it is applied to the barrel of the bale, it expels more air than net wrap would. This is claimed to result in better silage quality.

Finally, as plastic is used to both bind the bale in the bale chamber and to wrap the bale, during the winter feed the farmer will be left with one form of waste. McHale claims that this reduces the time needed to feed the bale and avoids the job of separating the twine or net wrap from the plastic before the plastic can be recycled.

New Holland to get FPT Cursor engine

New Holland Agriculture equipment will soon feature the Cursor 16 engine which has been named Diesel of the Year 2014 by Diesel magazine. Developed by sister company Fiat Powertrain (FPT) Industrial, the new 16-litre, six-cylinder in-line engine received this accolade in recognition of its technological excellence.

The engine uses FPT Industrial’s patented High Efficiency Selective Catalytic Reduction (Hi-eSCR) technology, which has been researched, designed and developed in-house to comply with the stringent Stage IV/Tier 4 Final and Euro VI emissions regulations. The Cursor 16 claims to offer a best-in-class power-to-weight ratio for a compact engine.

CEETTAR listed on EU advisory group

CEETTAR, the European agricultural contractor umbrella group to which Farm Contractors of Ireland (FCI) is affiliated, has been allocated seats on three of the EU Advisory Groups in DG AGRI. CEETTAR has been allocated a seat in the three groups it applied to, CAP, Rural Development, and Forestry.