Published by Farmers Guide, March 2009

Holmer’s Terra Felis lands on British soil

For £280,000 you get a self-propelled cleaner/loader that is capable of loading up to 250t/hr of beet from the clamp to a trailer.

UK HOLMER distributor Standen-Reflex hosted two demonstration days to show potential purchasers the benefits of the German manufacturer’s new £280,000 self-propelled Terra Felis sugar beat cleaner/loader at the beginning of February.
Hosted by WR Chapman & Sons, the demonstrations, near Ickburgh, Norfolk, allowed Holmer’s factory-trained driver to put the machine through its paces in a heap of exceptional beet from some of the 180 acres the Chapmans grew for the 2008/09 campaign.
Sitting close to the field edge and parallel to the road, the beet heap was ideally placed to allow the Holmer Terra Felis to load vehicles parked at the roadside. And with a potential throughput of 250t/hr, this meant that filling a bulker with 30t of beet was accomplished in a matter of minutes.
Standen-Reflex’s Alex Mathias acknowledged that the market for machines like the Holmer Terra Felis was limited in the UK, but he told Farmers Guide that the demonstration had attracted the interest of the East of England’s leading players in the sugar beet business and there was potential to sell a few machines here each year.
Launched at Agritechnica 2007, the Terra Felis was available on the Continent in 2008 and is now available to order for UK delivery in time for the 2009/10 campaign.
The cleaner loader comes with a 9m pick-up unit capable of working with a beet clamp 8.5m wide. Uniquely, the Terra Felis can be ordered with a special pick-up to lift beet from a concrete pad. This factory-fit option costs £7,000 and must be removed again to work in fields, with the changeover taking about three hours.
An 11.2m discharge elevator is fitted as standard, although the demonstrator at Ickburgh was fitted with the optional 13m elevator. It will operate through an arc of 300 degrees and at a discharge height of up to 6m.
Power is supplied by a 299hp Deutz diesel engine that is computer controlled to supply only the oil flow that the Terra Felis requires to operate its hydraulic systems effectively. This not only makes the machine economical in use, but keeps noise levels to a minimum.
The custom-built cab is ergonomically designed with user-friendly controls that include a screen interface and a precision joystick that takes care of all major functions. The operator’s seat swivels to give the best view of the beet heap and the trailer being loaded. Climate control is standard, while a diesel powered cab heater on a timer system is available as an option for early starts on winter mornings.
The pick-up and discharge elevator both fold up to give the Holmer Terra Felis a road-legal width of 3m, where the machine can make use of its 25km/hr top speed to move from job-to-job.