A new manufacturing partnership will see New Holland’s Speedrower Plus and Case IH’s WD5 windrower lines put to work swathing small grains and canola — and put made-in-Saskatchewan faces forward as they do.
Case IH and New Holland’s parent firm CNH and Honey Bee Manufacturing say they’ve set up a partnership agreement for compatibility between those two windrower lines and Honey Bee’s WSC Swather series draper heads.
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The draper’s components and wide swathing widths, along with the “speed and precision” of the Speedrower Plus, make for “a fast and efficient harvesting solution,” New Holland and Honey Bee said Tuesday in a release.
The combination of a WSC30 Swather draper head with the Speedrower 260 Plus was first put on display at an Ag PhD Field Day event at Baltic, S.D. on July 25, while the Honey Bee draper heads for Case IH windrowers were launched the previous week at Ag in Motion at Langham, Sask.
“Operations that swath grains have been asking for a draper head solution to work with our Speedrower Plus series self-propelled windrowers and we listened,” Josh Harkenrider, commercial hay and forage product marketing manager for New Holland Agriculture in North America, said in Tuesday’s release.
“We’re confident this partnership will provide a robust solution for customers as it combines the experience from Honey Bee with the productivity, precision and performance of our windrowers.”
New Holland and Honey Bee said the combination will be available in two draper head models, the 30-foot WSC30 and the 36-foot WSC36. Both will include the SCH Easy Cut cutting system with spring steel guards including cutting edges on the top and bottom, plus alternating, bolted, heat-treated sections, which the companies said will “eliminate” the need for hold-downs.
“When you combine the wide cutting widths and the array of proven components, along with the hydraulic capacity, advanced SensiDrive drive-by-wire controls and easy-to-use precision solutions on our Speedrower Plus Series, customers can expect a faster and more efficient harvest for seasons to come,” Harkenrider said.
The WSC30 and WSC36 are also the models compatible with Case IH’s WD5 units. Case IH said the Honey Bee draper heads with adjustable castering gauge wheels will “eliminate gouging and crop scuffing.”
The Case IH/Honey Bee collaboration “unlocks the draper potential of the WD5 series windrowers for small grain and canola producers,” Brian Spencer, Case IH marketing manager for hay and forage products, said in a separate release last month.
“Every minute a machine sits idle cuts into producers’ bottom lines,” he said. “The Honey Bee draper heads include heavy-duty rollers for a longer service life. They can also quickly replace reel fingers with only pliers and a wrench to get the equipment back in the field faster.”
Case IH said the draper heads’ integrated transport function will also allow operators to save time moving from field to field with “quick and convenient field-to-road conversion.”
Jamie Pegg, general manager for Honey Bee, said in Tuesday’s release that the partnership agreement “puts our proven platform into the hands of more farmers through CNH Industrial’s robust dealer network.”
Honey Bee was founded in 1979 by brothers Greg and Glenn Honey and their wives at Bracken, Sask., about 155 km south of Swift Current. The company expanded into harvest headers in the 1980s and set up shop at nearby Frontier in 1987.
The company today operates on over 100,000 square feet of production and warehousing space, selling into both the domestic and export markets. Its other product lines include the AirFlex, Grain Belt and Rice Belt header systems and the Rod Master rod weeder. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
