In Ireland we are favoured with a large number of companies offering tillage equipment covering all systems and situations.
Yet, there is newcomer waiting in the wings by the name of Nardi which is set to launch this summer with a range of implements which differ in style and approach to those that we are accustomed to.
Nardi hales from Perugia in the Umbria region of Italy, from a town by the name of Selci Lama, which, it is said, owes its existence to the local plough works which was chosen to equip Italy and its colonies with farming implements in the 1920s.
Nardi also owns a factory in northern Italy and another one in Serbia.
The plough works are still toiling away producing tillage equipment for the global market and is still run by Virgilio Nardi who is a 4th generation member of the Nardi family.
The company is setting out to expand the business by acquisition of smaller companies and increasing its sales in all regions and climates.
Agriland was invited to join the company in Italy this week for an examination of its tillage equipment and factory.
Nardi equipment
The first plough was produced in 1895 and the company was the first in Italy to make a reversible model.
Since then it has diversified into tillage implements, both tine and disc, sprayers, drills and flail mowers.
There are, the company has told us, two main reasons for its success. The first is its global reach with over 100 countries being serviced, and the second is the heat treatment of the steel it uses in its products.
Heat treatment
It is this process, which is a closely guarded family secret, that allows the life of the implements to be measured in decades rather than years.
This fact is born out by the spares department, still sending parts out for 40-year-old machines wherever they may be in the world.
Yet, it is not just the sale of ploughs that the company produces which lies behind the company’s desire to grow, it is the full and expanding range of tillage equipment that it wishes to bring to Ireland that has led to it appointing Cemachi of Co. Kildare as importer and agent.
The machines are already available but the full and official launch of the products will be held at this years National Ploughing Championships in Laois in September where a selection of machines will be available for viewing.
Pascal Walsh, managing director of Cemachi Machinery, is keen to get the brand up and running and believes that his previous experience as a grass and tillage farmer will help match farmers and contractors to the implement that best suits their needs.
The ethos of Cemachi is to provide factory to farmer value.
He noted that the machines are of equal quality to any other brand available and are competitively priced, it now just a question of presenting them to the Irish market.