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Why it is worth to harvest plums with a harvester?

2024 plum harvest season is slowly coming to an end in Poland. This year, it is happening faster than usual, because weather conditions and persistent high temperatures have significantly accelerated crop vegetation and ripening. The current situation on the stone fruit market is becoming more and more demanding for fruit growers. The lack of labor significantly hinders harvesting, which, combined with low purchase prices, means that the profitability of production is at risk. In the face of these challenges, harvesting mechanization is becoming a key solution that allows maintaining production efficiency.

FELIX/Z in a plum orchard

Plum harvesting with a harvester

Mechanical plum harvesting with a harvester is a modern solution that significantly facilitates work in orchards. The Weremczuk Agromachines’s offer includes a number of machines that provide excellent solutions for fruit harvesting. The FELIX/Z harvester allows for effective and quick harvesting of stone fruit (including plums, cherries, apples, nuts and more) without the need for manual work. This solution is ideal for orchards, where the distances between trees and their sizes are adapted to the requirements of mechanical harvesting, and the trees themselves are properly trimmed. The harvester requires only 4 people and a tractor operator, so it significantly reduces the demand for labor.

FELIX/Z harvester in an intensive plum orchard

Compared to traditional manual harvesting, mechanical plum harvesting with a harvester brings many benefits. First of all, it increases work efficiency, which is crucial in the face of rising costs and problems with the availability of seasonal workers. Harvesters allow for the harvesting of large quantities of fruit in a shorter time, which is especially important during periods of intensive harvesting, when every hour counts.

Plums harvested mechanically

How does a plum harvester work?

The machine is equipped with two vertical shakers with adjustable vibration amplitude, which gently shake the fruit from the trees. It also has a fan to blow away leaves, insects and other small debris. The cleaned fruit can be placed in small, 10-20 kg boxes or up to 500 kg big boxes. This not only improves the quality of the final product, but also shortens the time needed for its further processing. Thanks to the precise tree shaking system, the machine minimizes damage to branches and leaves, which contributes to better growth and yield of trees in the following years. The introduction of such machines is an investment that quickly pays off, especially in large orchards, where work efficiency is key.

FELIX/Z harvesting plums

Čačanska Rodna variety for freezing

This season, we visited an orchard of one of our Clients, where a FELIX/Z harvester works. This time, it was picking the Čačanska Rodna plums, which is one of the varieties bred by the Čačak Institute of Pomology in Serbia. The picked fruit was intended for freezing. The orchard contains both small, young trees and older ones – larger and more spread. All of them were so full of ripened fruit that they would not hold any more of it! In such conditions, the harvester worked perfectly, because manual harvesting of such quantities of fruits would have taken a very long time. The harvest went smoothly, and big boxes full of “purple goods” were unloaded from the machine one after another! We have prepared a film from this harvest for you, which we link below. We encourage you to watch it!

Other solutions for fruit harvesting

We also have other solutions for fruit growers in our offer. For those who have a smaller area of ​​crops or whose orchards are not adapted to mechanical harvesting, we offer MAJA shaking and cleaning harvesters. Machines from this series can also harvest fruit in traditional orchards, if the width between the rows allows the machine to enter. Depending on the customer’s needs, we have 2 types of shakers – MAJA Classic with a manually extendable screen and MAJA Automatic with an automatically extendable screen. We offer different types and working heights of arcs, different lengths (sizes) of machines and different dimensions of screens. A new solution for this season is an innovative, pipeless shaking head mounted on a hydraulic crane. You can read more about this solution here. If you need a machine, but are not sure whether your orchard is suitable for mechanical harvesting – contact us! Our team of specialists will certainly help you find a solution tailored to your needs and expectations.

Shaking and cleaning machine MAJA

Does mechanical harvesting of plums pay off?

In summary, plum harvesters are moderns tool that support fruit farmers in optimizing production, while taking care of the quality of the fruit and the health of the trees. Thanks to them, it is possible to achieve higher yields with less work, which is a significant competitive advantage on the market. The use of fruit harvesting machines also allows for a significant reduction in production costs, especially in the face of rising prices of manual labor and difficulties in finding seasonal workers. This solution perfectly fits the needs of modern fruit farmers, striving to optimize their production processes.

Plums harvested with FELIX/Z