In this series of articles, we will be sharing exclusive coverage from APF 2024.
PASI Nieminen joined Kesla as chief executive officer from Toyota Materials Handling Europe a few months ago.
He is well known in forestry circles – both in Britain and worldwide – for the time he spent with Logset.
The three Kesla product lines, he explained, consist of tractor equipment, logging equipment and vehicle-mounted timber loaders.
Kesla, he said, is a ‘premier’ brand. It is not cheap but its attraction lies in it build quality and useability.
The production of logging equipment (harvesting heads, parallel harvester cranes and medium-capacity grapples) continues, as does that of wagon and stationary loaders (straight-boom and Z-boom cranes and the larger-capacity grapples).
The latest new development is a loader in the tractor equipment range – the 324. This is a smaller single-extension version of the double-extension 326T developed for the Central European contractors who work in the confines of constricted thinning programmes and urban woodlands.
Meanwhile, in the early 1950s McConnel was the major supplier of forestry equipment in Britain and the Commonwealth.
The McConnel tractor-driven sawbench had been introduced in 1949 and it had revolutionised timber processing in the forest.
McConnel’s shift to a larger factory in Ludlow allowed the 10,000th unit to emerge from the works in less than three years.
The ‘Power Arm’ tractor-mounted hedgecutter was in the process of development and to this day remains a core product.
In 2010, McConnel launched the Remote Control Range tool carriers. The RoboCut S300 is a grass mower, with electric transmission powered from batteries or from a petrol engine/generator plant. The T400, T500, T600 and T800, however, are diesel-powered machines; the first two with Yanmar and the larger pair with Hatz engines.
Construction of the range is shared; two models are built by an Italian partner firm and two are built in England. Robo-Forest, Robo-Flail, Robo-Mulch and Robo-Stump Grinder are probably the attachments most interesting to visitors to the APF Show.
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