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HarvesTimes
POCKET ROCKET ‘A little pocket rocket’ is how Ian Paxton describes his AVERO 240 combine, which he says has an output that is totally at odds with its compact size.
“The AVERO is an amazing little combine. I had always run 5-walker machines and it took a lot of self persuasion to go for a smaller combine,” he says. “But I have to say that what it can do in a day is fantastic. In a good crop it will happily sit all day at about 16 tonnes an hour, with peaks of 20. Across all crops it has averaged 1.5ha per hour and 2.0 ha in wheat, and will comfortably clear around 16ha a day, which is more than enough. Overall it completes harvest in fewer hours and uses less fuel than my previous larger 5-walker.” All of the 141ha that Ian farms at South Littleton near Evesham are down to arable crops, plus he does a bit of contract combining for neighbours, meaning the AVERO ends up harvesting about 162ha a year. His own cropping is mainly down to 80ha of feed wheat, growing Diego and Santiago, virtually all of which goes to Cargill’s wheat processing plant at Manchester where it is made into starch. The remainder of the acreage is down to oilseed rape and a break crop of either spring barley or, as in this year, beans as this will enable him to get on top of areas of blackgrass. This is Ian’s second AVERO. The first was bought in 2012 which was replaced by a new combine for last harvest, complete with a new style VARIO 560 cutterbar with integral filler plates and the AVERO was also specified with 3D sieves and yield mapping. “I have always run my own combine, because you not only then have an asset, but you also have control. I only have a cold air drying system in bins so having my own combine allows me to choose when to go and harvest, rather than when it suits a contractor,” explains Ian.
“I was never intending to buy a new combine,” states Ian. “Historically I have always tended to run older combines and when I initially contacted Ed Parker (who is at WESTERN Evesham) I was looking for a good 4-5 year-old machine. However the choice was not great and a lot of them had as many hours on them as a 20-year-old combine. It was Ed who then suggested costing up a new AVERO and the deal that he came up with did make a lot of sense.” “Again I was not really looking to replace the AVERO for last harvest. CLAAS had done a number of updates to the old AVERO over the years, so I felt it would be good to have a fully up-to-date model, but I did also like the look of the new VARIO cutterbar, because the integral fitter plates and hook-on knives would save me a lot of time. Speaking with Ed, he had a market for the old AVERO in Austria and it had held its value very well, so again the deal was right and it made sense to replace it to take advantage of the latest features.” One of the great benefits for Ian of the small AVERO is its size. With heavy clay soils, the combine’s light weight means that compaction is kept to a minimum. This was brought home to Ian during his first harvest with his old AVERO in 2012 when, while other neighbouring combines were struggling to