LEMKEN - The AgroVision Company

Our turnover plan for 2011 is roughly level with that for the current year. At first glance that may appear to be somewhat conservative but there are elements of uncertainty that could have a curbing effect on all our business during the coming year. This includes, for example, further developments on the global financial markets and the difficultly involved in estimating how to develop our business during the coming year in a vital market for LEMKEN such as Belarus, where our deliveries depend more on the allocation of state tax revenue than on any market influences. This is why we are sticking with the somewhat more cautious standards associated with a responsible businessman, and - in view of our practised flexibility in the deployment of additional capacities - we are prepared to respond quickly if and when the markets call for such action. Our increased stocks of machines and spare parts demonstrate that we are geared towards being able to make short-term shipments when required.

The turnover for 2010 did not quite reach the previous year's value of € 215 million, but with almost € 205 million the planned target figure was exceeded by more than € 20 million. For the domestic business the percentage reduction compared with the previous year  was slightly larger than for export, but this is understandable because last year our German customers significantly reduced their level of investment in new agricultural machines, while in 2009, the banks in Eastern Europe had already closed the credit tap to the farmers.


In 2010 business for LEMKEN in Eastern Europe had picked up again somewhat. In Russia, in particular, we more than doubled our turnover, but are still a long way off the peak values of the 2008 record year. In the Ukraine our sales for 2010 also improved again. The same applies for Poland and the Baltic States. By contrast farmers in the major Western Europe markets, such as France and Denmark, made fewer orders than in Germany and therefore contributed to having better export sales than planned for, although they were slightly lower than the figure for the previous year.

In May 2010 we finally saw our new distribution and service centre in Russia's Detschino go online. Located not far from the new Volkswagen plant in the Kaluga region, we celebrated the event with a well-attended opening ceremony together with Grimme. The most important contact point for our Russian customers is situated directly next to the M3 motorway which is roughly 140 km south-west of Moscow on the way to Kiev. The employees at LEMKEN RUS are really pleased with the modern offices and attractive training premises, while our sales team in Russia expects us to start producing semi-mounted reversible ploughs and compact disc harrows there as soon as possible. This gives us or our Russian colleagues an opportunity to profit from state subsidies for locally-manufactured LEMKEN machines.

For our new plough factory in Nagpur, right in the heart of the Indian continent, LEMKEN has budgeted for an investment of almost € 7 million. At the end of 2010 the building shell was allocated and we are still on schedule for a production start-up in the second half of 2011. Naturally, all the colleagues working on the project at LEMKEN are also fully aware that our first real production location abroad is unable to be planned down to the last detail, as was the case for the new assembly hall for our field sprayers in Trier.  

Many contacts from India's science and economy areas have confirmed that the young generation of the Indian rural population is looking for a better way of life than that afforded by hard manual labour on the local fields. This is why young people are increasingly migrating to the larger cities, something which in turn means there are fewer labourers available in the country for knuckling down to the hard work . If India is to have fewer hungry mouths to feed in the future, the increasing lack of farmworkers can only be compensated for in the long term by a greater degree of agricultural mechanisation.

In China LEMKEN has altered its strategy this year to the extent that we no longer intend to only have a foothold in the Chinese market in the form of the ongoing cooperation with the major tractor manufacturer Foton-Lovol. We also want to ship directly to large-scale Chinese companies with LEMKEN technology "Made in China", because only implements manufactured locally can benefit from the significant amount of subsidies made available by the government for the agricultural sector. In China, as is the case in India, there is a lack of state-of-the-art agricultural engineering for tractors which are currently supplied from the local plants by internationally-renowned groups. In contrast to the situation in India the Chinese fields also use high-performance tractors, so that we can sell the same implements there as the ones we manufacture in Alpen, Meppen and Hetzerath.

Therefore we intend to rent a site in an industrial estate roughly 150 km to the south-east of Beijing in the sea port of Tianjin with a population of one million, which will then have a workshop built on it according to our specifications. The office building is ready to be moved in to. Once the hall has been built we anticipate we can start our final assembly operation in China from the middle of 2011 onwards. This intention is the logical step towards exploitation of the Chinese market, particularly since we have been establishing a sales network for many years now, initially with an agency and then finally through a subsidiary, which jointly ran a successful demonstration farm with Claas, Grimme, Rauch and Monosem to present modern agricultural methods in the north-east of China.         

With the Juwel, LEMKEN is launching a new generation of mounted reversible ploughs with even greater operating comfort coupled with outstanding working quality. Thanks to the comprehensive range of equipment options each farmer and private contractor can configure the perfect basic soil cultivation implement to suit his requirements.

The innovative, electrohydraulic TurnControl enables the plough angle to be set directly from the tractor seat, something which makes working on slopes significantly easier and more comfortable. To plough the first and last low furrow, the set and stored angle can also be “overridden”. Apart from this, the comfortable operation means that the Juwel can be mounted and dismounted reliably with a horizontally-positioned bar shaft. The integrated frame swivelling-in function results in significantly greater clearance between the support wheel and the soil when turning, something which tends to be of a tremendous advantage, particularly on tractors with a low lifting height as well as long and heavy five to seven-furrow ploughs.

All Juwel ploughs from LEMKEN are equipped with the "DuraMaxx" base generation, which is unique to the market. All DuraMaxx mould boards and strips are mounted to the base hull so there is no longer any need for the drilling and stamping of holes. This is why DuraMaxx parts can be made of significantly harder, i.e. low-wear steel. Apart from this, DuraMaxx parts are no longer designed as load-bearing parts on the plough base so that they can be to all intents and purposes completely used. These advantages increase the service life by roughly 50 % and shorten setting-up time by up to 80 %.

The DuraMaxx hybrid base variant enables the plastic and steel strips to be combined on the same base hull. This in turn boosts plough efficiency significantly and enables excellent adaptation to the prevalent soil conditions at any given time – even on particularly sticky soil conditions.

The similarly brand-new Hydromatic overload protection on the Juwel in the T-Version serves to enhance safety on stony ground. This means the plough base can be moved out over and beyond the low-maintenance bearing points by up to 38 cm upwards and simultaneously up to 20 cm to the side. The release forces can be adjusted easily and quickly from the comfort of the tractor cab using the control unit, which is particularly advantageous when on changing soil conditions.

The various fertiliser injectors available for the Juwel, with the integrated projection angle adjustment, enable clog-free ploughing even on difficult soil conditions.

All Juwel mounted ploughs are highly stable and long-lasting thanks to the bolted-on frame design. Naturally, the LEMKEN developed and proven "Optiquick" setting centre is also used on this plough, so the front furrow width and the optimum tractor/plough towing line can be easily and quickly adapted to suit irrespective of each other. This in turn ensures easy pulling capability coupled with low-wear working. The hydraulic support wheel enables adaptation of the working depth from the tractor cab, when moving, using a double-acting control unit. The integrated damper ensures the wheel is swivelled gently during the turning process.

On both the Hydrix and the Hydromatic stump-jump devices the release forces can be adjusted using the tractor control unit. Particularly on stony soil conditions in combination with greatly varying soils this offers distinct advantages. On light soil conditions low release forces should be used when ploughing  to ensure that stones in the soil remain there. When deployed on heavy soil conditions the tractor driver can use the control unit to adjust the system pressure so that the plough is firmly seated in the soil, and the stump-jump device is only then actuated when it is really required. To achieve this a minimum and a maximum value of 50 and 140 bar respectively are set for the release forces using a hand-wheel directly mounted onto the mast's control block. The pressures between the upper and lower values can then be individually moved to from the driver's seat in the tractor.

The major difference between the Hydrix and the Hydromatic stump-jump devices lies in the plough base's optional evasion range. Greater flexibility is provided by the Hydromatic in the form of 38 cm upwards coupled with a simultaneous evasion range option of up to 20 cm to the side.
Apart from this, the stump-jump devices is also the world’s only steering system, which ensures a fixed connection of the plough base to the three-dimensional bearing point in every position. This in turn means instability cannot arise when the base is swung simultaneously upwards and to the side for evasion.

The visually attractive integrated, horizontally installed hydraulic cylinder of the Hydromatic stump-jump devices is better protected against damage caused by external influences.
In addition to this the complete system is a low-maintenance design.

Following the successful launch of the folding Compact-Solitair 9/600 K H with the Heliodor compact disc harrow tools in 6 metre working width, LEMKEN has this year introduced its folding Compact-Solitair 9 K K cultivation combination with circular spike harrow with a 6 metre working width. Equipped with the Zirkon 10 circular spike harrow it has shown itself to be an extremely efficient combination no matter what the soil conditions. In both the conventional and conservation cultivation methods the circular spike harrow can really play to its strengths, to ensure that in a single operation an optimum seed bed can be prepared in almost any type of soil, in particular in heavy and greatly varying soils.

For site-optimised soil cultivation the working width of the circular spike harrow can be hydraulically adjusted from the tractor seat. The centrally swinging suspension of the two up to three-metre wide circular spike harrow elements serve to guarantee excellent adaptation to any field outline while improving towing capability. The standard three-point interface in the rear makes it possible to use an individual single grain seed drill for maize planting instead of the OptiDisc coulter bar. This in turn makes the machine particularly interesting for private contractors and large-scale companies.

Today, when seeding, efficiency takes on an increasingly greater significance with regard to the seed drill technology used – without making any compromises in terms of excellent recompacting and perfect seeding. The 3,500 litre seed tank and its simple filling method speak in favour of using the Compact-Solitair H with the Heliodor compact disc harrow tool.  This means that even with a 3 metre and 4 metre wide cultivation combination, extremely high area coverage is possible. The low-maintenance OptiDisc double disc coulters guarantee precise depth guide even at high running speeds.

New to the LEMKEN product range for 2011 is the combination of mounted Heliodor compact disc harrow with the pneumatic Solitair seed drill. In particular, companies with low area structures, that use both mulch sowing and the conventional method, benefit from this new combination. Depending on the cultivation combination or the type of soil in question, the pneumatic Solitair seed drill can still be combined with the Zirkon circular spike harrow or with the Heliodor compact disc harrow. Because both soil cultivation implements are equipped with the same coupling points, the implements can be quickly coupled and uncoupled. This means that Heliodor and Zirkon can also be used individually.

For many companies, the major advantage in this modular system lies in the fact that they are equipped for all the cultivation methods, without any need to invest in a new seed drill technology. With the combination of Heliodor and Solitair a cultivation combination is created with high working speed, yet comparably low fuel requirement, which is particularly well-suited for mulch sowing. By contrast, the Zirkon circular spike harrow creates an ideal crumbled seed bed after the plough.

In both instances the pneumatic Solitair seed drill with its share system made up of double disc coulters and depth guide rollers guarantees uniform seed sowing at the required depth.

The VariTansanit hybrid plough is coupled in the same manner as a plough hitched to the tractor's upper and lower control link. The clue to everything lies in the hydraulic upper control link, which enables it to move like a semi-mounted plough. The background to this is as follows: All mounted ploughs use the tractor's control hydraulics for better traction, whereby a part of the plough weight is transferred to the tractor. However, this does not function on a semi-mounted plough because it has a pivot after the coupling in the three-point suspension, which in turn means that when ploughing with the control hydraulic only the front section of the plough is raised. This means that weight can be shifted from the plough to the tractor. To solve this problem the unique hybrid plough from LEMKEN, is equipped with VariTansanit electrical control units, which then automatically perform all the vital functions such as raising the semi-mounted wheels, cutting width adjustment, front furrow width adjustment and plough rotation. A control unit is also connected to the hydraulic upper control link. The entire control unit is supplied with oil from the tractor by way of a pressure line, a return line and the small load detection line. The Hybrid Control’s control panel, which is mounted into the tractor cab, can be used to regulate the hydraulic pressure between 100 and 140 bar, to shorten the upper control link. This enables weight to be shifted from the semi-mounted wheel, i.e. from the plough, to the tractor.

If the tractor's front axle moves over an uneven piece of ground, then the pressure stored in the upper control link is reduced. The plough's hydraulics system registers this change and issues a message to the tractor through the load detection line that oil is required. The tractor then pumps oil into the upper control link by way of the electrical control units until the pressure rises again to the original value. This serves to keep slip at a minimum while increasing traction. The system functions in exactly the same manner in the opposite direction: if the tractor moves with its rear axle over an uneven piece of ground, then the pressure rises above the set value. The system registers this change and reduces the value. If the tractor starts to slip, the wheels "dig" in particularly at the rear, the pressure also drops here. The system regulates the pressure to suit, to increase the load on the rear axle, whereupon the tractor then moves forward.
At the headland, the hybrid plough is raised beyond the lower control link and the hydraulic upper control link moves out so the plough is also borne by the semi-mounted wheel. When driving into the furrow the upper control link is shortened again.

In the summer of 2010 the German customs authorities attested that we are particularly reliable with regard to the handling of our export shipments, and they also issued us with the corresponding certification - all signed and sealed.

What does this certificate signify? In view of the increasing amount of goods exchanged internationally, and the "black sheep" who use such goods traffic for all kinds of underhand purposes, the EU customs authorities have been considering how they can monitor the goods traffic in a more efficient manner. It then seemed reasonable to introduce a reliability test for interested export companies, with the result that the exports and imports for these companies were no longer subjected to such intensive inspection at the outer frontiers of the EU compared with the goods from those companies that do not have such certification. This means that customs authorities can concentrate their attention more on the supposed "black sheep" and no longer waste any time on checking the goods traffic of certified "reliable economic operators“.

We have subjected ourselves to this reliability test with considerable effort. All pertinent steps undertaken by LEMKEN in production and administration are verified in keeping with the most stringent  specifications and under the critical surveillance of the customs officers with regard to whether we operate in a reliable and conscientious manner, whether all documents are complete and correct , and whether we prevent any third parties from using us as a company for any shady, perhaps even terrorist activities.

In June, as a "grand finale" to the test, the customs authorities undertook a comprehensive round of inspections, in which our security and quality standards were once more subject to intense scrutiny. Anyone listening intently could clearly hear the sighs of relief as our colleagues were finally given the OK by the officials following scores of discussions and last-minute optimisations, whereupon the longed-for "Reliable Economic Operator" customs certificate was handed over.

What does this signify for LEMKEN? We have significantly easier access to simplified customs laws, our goods are no longer checked as often, and we are informed about random sampling inspections in advance and given priority processing. Indeed, we expect this to give us a competitive advantage, because our EU certificate is also recognised in other countries that are not part of the EU, and we can then count on having the same advantages with time savings with regard to the shipment of our implements and spare parts as we currently enjoy in the EU. As far as we are aware, we are the first German company in our industry to have been awarded such a quality certificate by the customs authorities.

For many years now LEMKEN has had a motto with regard to the matter of service: "Soil cultivation is sold out on the field!“ It is no different in the area of seeding technology and field sprayers. This is why the closeness of our excellently qualified sales team, including the service personnel, to the trade and customers, an outstanding demonstration and consulation service for the first use of our equipment and the prompt supply of LEMKEN genuine spare parts are our most important keys for success. Naturally, this service - be it today or tomorrow - comes at a price. However, frugality at this point benefits neither the customer nor LEMKEN.

Genuine spare parts from LEMKEN are available through specialised trade outlets. Information on genuine spare parts is also available on the LEMKEN homepage and orders can also be placed there. These are then shipped as quickly as possible by local specialised dealers, for all orders received by 5 p.m. this occurs on the morning after.