Claas – the German farm machinery giant – has officially opened its new “state-of-the-art” training centre in Suffolk, England.
The launch event took place yesterday (Wednesday, October 4), during which Claas UK opened its new so-called ‘Claas Academy‘.
The company also reportedly has plans to build a whole new UK headquarters – at its existing site at Saxham, which is close to Bury St Edmunds (England).
The Claas Academy, which is located beside the company’s existing UK headquarters, will host British and Irish apprentices and trainees. It will serve as a training hub for service technicians and engineers, as well as for sales personnel – not just for the UK but also for Ireland. The facility will employ 11 trainers on-site.
Image source: Claas / East Anglian Daily Times
Guest of honour at the event was Lothar Kriszun, who is on the board of Claas. He has worked for the company for 36 years.
He noted that, in spite of Brexit, there is a market for agricultural products. He explained that although the number of farmers is decreasing in the UK and elsewhere, the land is there and it will be farmed.
Also front and centre at the launch was the company’s UK CEO Trevor Tyrrell – originally from Ireland. The event was also attended by a number of Claas dealers from Ireland.
Developments back in Germany
In other Claas news, the company is embarking on the construction of a major new equipment test centre at its base in Harsewinkel, Germany.
The new facility will “significantly increase its testing capacities for the development of new agricultural machinery”, according to the company. It is scheduled for completion in autumn 2018. The total investment in the new centre is projected at over €15 million.
“We will merge the test laboratories at our Harsewinkel site into the new test centre; it will also enable us to expand our capacities and lower the dependency of our testing cycles on the harvest schedules,” said Oliver Westphal, Head of Validation at Claas.
“The test centre will be able to simulate a broad variety of climatic conditions encountered during harvests around the world. These simulations will help the engineers to assess the performance capabilities and reliability of the machinery – at an early stage of its development.”
The new centre will be equipped to test components for combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors.
“We exclusively test the functions and durability of the components in our machines. They are becoming increasingly complex, while at the same time needing to satisfy an increasingly large raft of statutory requirements,” explained Westphal.
Image source: Shane Casey
“We do not test the quality of harvest [crop] flow here; there are other test facilities responsible for that.”
He claims that the new test centre will be state-of-the-art. “We will use 300kW electric drive units instead of diesel engines to test the transmission components,” added Ulrich Elfers, Project Manager (in charge of construction).
