Boundary Bend is currently leading the marketing of new harvesting technologies with its involvement with MaqTec Argentina in developing the Colossus. The Colossus is the most popular olive harvester in the new olive growing areas with more than 26 machines in 3 different continents.

During the last 30 years, mechanical harvesting with trunk shakers has been considered the most reliable method for reducing labour costs.  These harvesting methods are still being used extensively in the Mediterranean region. During the last decade, modern large-scale groves have discovered some of the limitations of using discontinuous systems and a new generation of continuous harvesting machines has been adapted or developed and used in many olive-growing regions.

Grape harvesters and coffee harvesters have been used in young trees with optimal results. In California and Argentina, and most recently in Australia, modern olive groves have approached the problem of mechanisation in a different way than in the Mediterranean growing areas.

Engineering companies and growers decided to design continuous harvesters adapted to the size of trees in modern groves of typical densities between 250 and 550 trees per hectare. Percentage of fruit removal, level of tree and fruit damage and cost of the harvest per kilogram are very encouraging, even in full canopy size trees.

Links :  www.maqtec.com