Standen Engineering Ltd is delighted to have successfully delivered five T2XS harvesters and five Vine snappers to the Kenana Sugar Company (KSC), one of the largest integrated sugarcane and ethanol producers in the world.
Although principally being a sugarcane grower and processor, KSC grow 15,000 acres of sweet potatoes to process as backup feedstock for sugarcane molasses, processing up to 1,500 metric tonnes a day. Being a considerably sized operation, KSC approached Standen in their search for a turnkey solution from a reputable supplier of sweet potato vine handling and harvesting machinery. Standen was the only company offering the full solution.
KSC’s sweet potatoes are farmed on land south of Khartoum, approximately 42 metres above the River Nile and uses river water, pumped up from the Nile, in a flood irrigation method. The soil is reasonable but with significant clay content which, albeit stone free, can be cloddy / sticky. The flood irrigation and subsequent baking effect of the sun means that clay clods can be a problem when harvesting.
KSC’s senior management made two trips to meet with the Standen team at Ely. Following a review of current machinery in operation and the scale of the project, KSC decided upon and ordered five Standen T2XS harvesters and five BauMan vine snappers to enable their target daily tonnage into the factory to be harvested, when up to full production.
The Standen T2XS harvester is suited to the sticky / cloddy conditions in Sudan because of the wide variety of separator options and the size of the Omega separation area. Standen also have a lot of experience of the sweet potato crop and have sold various models in the Standen harvester range for sweet potato harvesting in the USA, and to other countries. The ease of maintenance of the T2XS also was a big factor in deciding on Standen machines, particularly as the OMEGA separators have direct hydraulic motor drive, meaning in field maintenance and downtime is kept to a minimum. Operation of the machines also was also noticed to be straight forward via the touch screen console.
Standen is the distributor for BauMan snappers outside of North America and KSC chose them as they are an integral part of the Standen Sweet Potato Turnkey Solution. Standen have been selling the vine snappers into many countries successfully for some years. The order did not require the usual choppers built into the Snapper as KSC will pick up and bale the snapped off vines to use for animal fodder.
Standen is actively quoting for sweet potato Slip Planters to complete the KSC growing solution.
Phillip Bosworth, Exports Sales Manager for Standen Engineering said “This was an exciting and excellent project to be involved in and very interesting to deal with a company of the scale of the Kenana Sugar Company. We are delighted that they chose our machinery which is working very well for them at a local level.”
