Cleaning seed on-farm helps Lincolnshire grower significantly drive up bottom line

Andrew Stovin’s JK Machinery JCM 10122 VibroMax cleaner with Skandia grain handling system.

Mr Stovin farms 500ha near Alford on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds with his father Alan and brother Mathew, growing wheat, barley, spring beans and around 160ha of grass seed alongside raising a herd of 60 suckler cattle.

“Before we had the JCM VibroMAX we had to pay our seed merchants to clean the seed for us,” he explained. “They would come and take a sample and anything below 98% pure seed had to be cleaned. It is not hard to see that paying for cleaning quickly eroded our profit margin.”

A couple of years ago, Mr Stovin saw one of his university friends using a JCM VibroMAX to clean grain and immediately saw its potential to clean grass seed. He now also uses the equipment, which he acquired from McArthur Agriculture, to clean home-saved seed.

“Following discussions with Scott McArthur, Director at McArthur Agriculture, my father, brother and I took a sample of our grass seed to McArthur’s Flixborough depot to conduct a trial with the JCM VibroMAX,” he said.

“Seed cleaning of any kind has a lot of variables that can affect the quality of the outcome and predicting the quality of the cleaned seed can be difficult. However, the results achieved with the JCM VibroMAX gave us the confidence that it would deliver the high standard required by our seed merchants.”

The JCM VibroMAX 10122 moves the grass seed across two vibrating sieves and the impurities are separated based on physical dimensions, before entering an aspirator where they are separated by weight and aerodynamic properties. The machine’s vibration technology is designed to deliver simple to control high-output processing with low energy requirements.

For harvest 2021, the Stovins used the JCM VibroMAX cleaner as a stand-alone machine to test its efficiency before making any additional investment in handling equipment.

“The JCM VibroMAX performed extremely well so we asked McArthur Agriculture to design a handling system to further streamline the processing of our grass seed in time for harvest 2022,” Mr Stovin added.

Grass seed is now tipped into a Skandia Elevator AB KTG above ground intake which feeds one of two Skandia SE140 belt and bucket elevators transporting the grain to the JCM VibroMAX.

Once cleaned, the seed is taken by the second belt and bucket elevator to feed a Skandia KTF horizontal chain and flight conveyor which carries the seed to one of three bunkers housed in the same shed as the cleaner. One outlet allows filling directly into a trailer, whilst another has been fitted with ducting designed for filling bulk bags.

Key to driving up bottom line

Using the JCM VibroMAX has allowed the Stovins to cut the costs of having grass seed cleaned by their seed merchants and hiring a mobile seed cleaning lorry to clean home-saved seed.

“We don’t have to wait for the mobile seed cleaning team to fit us in, we can clean the seed as and when we need to, which helps speed up our entire seed handling process,” Mr Stovin remarked.

What’s more, McArthur Agriculture has designed the current seed handling system so it’s easy for the Stovins to extend their cleaning or handling capability to accommodate seed from neighbouring farmers.

“We are hoping to generate another revenue stream by offering neighbouring farmers the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits which the JCM VibroMAX has delivered for us, by allowing them to reduce their costs by producing their own cleaned home saved seed, regardless of the crop,” Mr Stovin revealed.

“Looking at the big picture around how we have been able to successfully utilise the JCM VibroMAX, I anticipate that we will meet our expectation of achieving a return on our investment within three to four years,” he added.

“Anyone considering on farm cleaning would do well to talk to McArthur Agriculture about JK Machinery’s range of vibrating sieve cleaners.”