Fliegl Agrartechnik – a division of the wider Fliegl business – has acquired French trailer/spreader manufacturer Brochard.
Fliegl – based in Germany – is a well-known entity; one of its more innovative products is the so-called Buffel/’Buffalo’ (pictured above).
As part of the deal, the Brochard brand-name will reportedly be retained in markets where its products are already known and sold.
Brochard hit the headlines back in 2014, when one of its spreaders was used to set a “world record for manure [muck] spreading”. The machine was coupled to a pivot-steer (articulated) New Holland T9.615.
4,217t were apparently spread over 221.8ha in 24 hours; the feat was recorded by ‘Guinness World Records’.
‘Unload-on-the-move’ wagon
More recently, back in 2017, Fliegl hit the headlines when it first unveiled its novel Buffel (or ‘Buffalo’).
The Buffel is a forage harvesting machine; it encompasses a pick-up reel, a chopping rotor (similar to that in a silage wagon or a round baler), a bunker and an unloading conveyor.
It is essentially a self-loading silage wagon that can unload on the move – enabling it to keep picking up grass whilst unloading.
The idea is that the machine can continuously pick up swaths of grass – unloading (on-the-move) as and when tractors and trailers come back from the pit.
Upon each empty trailer’s return, it simply runs alongside the Buffel – in much the same way as a trailer would ‘side-fill’ from a self-propelled (precision-chop) harvester.
However, in the case of the Buffel, grass is unloaded via a conveyor system (rather than being blown by an accelerator through a chute).