Full focus on manure handling equipment - grassland activities transferred to Kverneland Group

 In Europe, manure handling stands in the centre of attention due to increasingly stringent environmental legislations and continuously increasing fertilizer prices, causing a growing interest from arable farmers for the use of organic manure.

Over the past four years, Veenhuis´s turnover in manure handling equipment has more than doubled (raise of approximately 200%). This has given Veenhuis a very strong market position in the Benelux and Germany in the contractor segment, with highly sophisticated and high-capacity manure tanks and umbilical hose systems as well as different application systems.
Veenhuis now chooses for a full focus on development, production and international distribution of this product group, because approximately 85% of the companies turnover is already related to manure handling equipment.

All designs, patents and products for grassland equipment will, in the line of the transaction, be transferred to Kverneland, who will distribute these products in Vicon and Kverneland Taarup brands. In the period 2010 and 2011, the products will still be produced by Veenhuis. Veenhuis will continue offering spare parts and services to its existing customers.

The separation of the grassland products is very much in line with the focussed strategy of Veenhuis Machines B.V. of supplying an extensive line of manure handling equipment. This follows Veenhuis' strategy of strengthening and developing tomorrows international manure handling business.

Walter Veenhuis, Managing Director of Veenhuis Machines B.V. states:
¨Over the last years, we have been confronted with increasingly high demands on manure handling equipment, due to further development of environmental legislation. We have positioned our company in a market leading position in the field of low-emission slurry application (injection). We expect manure handling technologies to develop further in the future. ¨

Walter Veenhuis further elaborates:
¨This is a very important and well considered decision for Veenhuis. Despite the fact that Veenhuis was the first manufacturer ever to build a silage transportation trailer and has also been one of the pioneers in the development of dual purpose self-loading wagons with a highly acknowledged reputation, Veenhuis will now fully focus on manure handling. We have looked for a strong partner with similar high quality reputation to continue the distribution of our grassland equipment which we found in Kverneland Group.¨

Walter Veenhuis continues:
¨We are very pleased that the products that we developed, including the recently developed new concept self loading forage wagon, will be further developed and distributed by a very strong player on the grassland market. This enables us to fully focus on the growth of our manure handling business. We will be able to follow up with new market demands and technologies while out sales and marketing efforts will be focussed on the increase of our international distribution network. We will be offering a complete range of products for manure handling that enable our customers the most accurate and efficient use of organic manure and its minerals. This transaction changes nothing to the ownership of the company and it has no consequences for the employment within the company."

Veenhuis´s manure handling equipment range includes tanks, from 1 to 4 axles varying from 8000 up to 40.000 litres, umbilical hose systems and several application systems, such as trailing-hose, trailing-shoe, shallow injectors, arable injectors, arable disc injectors.

The Veenhuis manure handling product range will be presented on Agritechnika in Hannover from 10-14 November (Stand 27 E 25).
On the stand, Veenhuis will display, next to regularly sold injection equipment, its most recent developments such as a high quality tanker with centrifugal pump-system, a slurry-reel system, that sets new standards in the field of umbilical systems. This machine enables contractors to apply manure into crop rows, without having to travel through tramlines several times. This way, soil-compaction is avoided to the maximum (0.4 bar tyre pressure). Also the newly developed Terraject Disc arable disc injector will be shown. This machine is built to apply manure to land in a most efficient way, with a very compact, lightweight way of construction, making the machine very suitable for the use on slurry tanks and self propelled slurry tanks.

For more information see www.kvernelandgroup.com