Valtra recently assembled a sizable collection of journalists at Suolahti, Finland, to launch a tractor series with modest upgrades to its S Series.

Yet the new S Series models were only part of the story, what the company also wanted to tell us was that Valtra has recently had its future assured with several moves that reinforce it as a vital part of AGCO’s future strategy.

Job creation celebrated

While the European agricultural press has been focussed on the tractors, the local papers have been full of the welcome news of Valtra’s expansion over the summer.

A €1 million investment in the production line was one item, while the commissioning of the new paint shop was another, yet the major causes for celebration were the transfer of the S Series production from Beauvais in France to Finland, along with the production of the new ML 260 CVT transmission which is also to be built at Suolahti.

Valtra factory at Suolahti — Entrance to the main factory building at Suolahti

Altogether, these moves account for the creation of 200 new manufacturing jobs at the production plant that sits deep in the Finnish forest, some 40 minutes from Jyvaskyla, the major city in the area.

This new facility will, as one local observer pointed out, greatly exceed present requirements and “is big news for decades to come” as a statement of AGCO’s faith in Valtra to deliver the engineering and manufacturing expertise required for ever more sophisticated tractors.

Cooling of painted skid units — Freshly painted skid units are cooled with filtered air having emerged from the curing oven

As another pointer to the extra capacity that is being built into the facility, the new paint shop receives a completed skid unit every 11 minutes, this interval can be reduced to every eight minutes if additional staff are recruited and assigned to the assembly stations along the track.

Finnish pride in Suolahti

There remains within Valtra a strong sense of national pride and having the S Series, along with its engine and transmission, made in the country is a great selling point for the brand, the company believes.

With all Valtra’s tractors, other than the A series, now being built at Suolahti, the company dealer network can boast of selling a brand which fully reflects the Nordic character of determination, and, as we were regularly reminded, Finland is rated the happiest country on earth.

Valtra unlimited equipment — Up to 30% of the tractors from the production line pass through the Valtra Unlimited workshop where extra equipment is added as well as custom finishes

Building excess capacity into production plants is nothing new but in this case, the local community has taken it as a huge vote of confidence in the factory and Valtra itself is keen to spread the good news.

In addition to the extra jobs in the production facility the design and engineering teams have been expanded and are outgrowing their present office in nearby Jyvaskyla.

Original factory at Jyvaskyla — The original cannon factory where Valmet production started in 1952 will now play host to Valtra’s development team

There is, thankfully, some free office space in one particular building in the city. It was constructed in 1913 to house a cannon factory and has since undergone conversion to offices although at one time, in the 1950s, it housed a fledgling tractor-manufacturing company by the name of Valmet.

Three early Valmet tractors on display at Suolahti. The model on the right is a 15hp prototype from 1951

That company has now grown into the present day Valtra and this move will mark the completion of the circle as Valtra moves back into its birthplace 71 years after Valmet

Fuelling the future

The debate over fuelling tractors has moved on from simply replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors – all the major engine manufacturers now agree that simply is not going to work in the off-road environment with present battery technology.

Factory production line at Suolahti — The engines coming in from the factory at Linnavuori are mated with the transmissions at the start of the assembly line

This is confirmed by Kelvin Bennet, vice president of engineering at AGCO. An engaging engineer from Arkansas, Kelvin spent a good part of his youth haymaking with Massey Ferguson tractors and machinery before college and then starting a career that now sees him over internal combustion engine development during a period of doubt over its future.

Not that he has any doubt whatsoever about its continuing role in agriculture. He points out that any new system of delivering and storing energy for use by tractors will require a completely new infrastructure to handle it.

Skid unit at Suolahti factory — Over 100 years of engineering development has gone into tractor design using engines. Switching to battery power will not be cheap or simple, even if it were feasible

Farmers, he notes, have an average of eight vehicles on the farm, including tractors, harvesters and cars, running on diesel. Any switch to an alternative fuel will require all of those to be replaced. “Is” he asks, “the farmer going to go ahead and replace them all in one go?”.

Liquid fuels are here to stay

That such a thing will happen is something he does indeed doubt, and although he would not be so bold as to state exactly what he thinks tractors will be running on 20 years hence, the impression given is that he, and by extension, AGCO, do not foresee any great changes in the short to medium-term.

This does not exclude the use of other liquid fuels and he reminds us that the core engine is designed that so that it can be easily adapted to burn other energy-carrying liquids rather than have farming rely on batteries.

Neste service station — Neste already provides 20% of Finland’s diesel in the form of hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO)

To find out quite what AGCO has in store, we will have to wait until Agritechnica in November where, Kelvin promises us, there will be many new ideas and concepts involving the new engine family on show, including some news on engine displacements.

One of the reasons given for not fitting the new S series models with the latest core engine is that there are no versions of it available large enough to provide sufficient power. This is going to change, but we are going to have to wait a couple of months before finding out just what AGCO’s plans are.

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