Fendt drives precision and innovation at leading pine nursery

When Patrick Murray took over his family’s pine seedling nursery in New Zealand, he saw an opportunity to disrupt an entire niche industry. More accuracy, better engineering and smarter machinery would unlock more production per hectare.

With Trimble guidance and Fendt 300 Series tractors working in perfect sync, Murray Nurseries now trims roots within 4.5 cm of each plant, sprays the entire farm in 12 hours instead of months, and pushes output toward an incredible 17 million seedlings per year.

Three Fendt tractors - a 313 and two 312 Series run highly specialised nursery implements with the precision needed to maximise space, speed and consistency across the operation.

When your crop is more valuable than gold kiwifruit, there are plenty of incentives to increase output per hectare. That is why Murray Nurseries have developed their own planting, trimming and spraying implements for their Pinus radiata seedling operation. They have also invested in top-end Fendt tractors and Trimble guidance to run those implements with the precision needed to maximise every centimetre of their farm.

The Murray family started producing radiata pine seedlings on their 38-ha Woodville nursery in 1961. It is the largest single site pine seedling nursery by production in the country providing seedlings to forestry businesses in both the North and South Islands. Patrick Murray is the second generation of the family to run the seedling business. He took over in 2011, and he has poured a lot of effort and resources into boosting its efficiency.

When he took over, Patrick could see the niche industry’s technology and farming practices desperately needed to improve. An initial step was to work with his engineer to develop a 10-row vacuum seed sower. He also adopted GPS and reconfigured his beds and row spacings to produce more seedlings in the same area. He and his team went on to design and build more implements - a hooded sprayer, a lateral root trimmer and an under cutter (which slices the tap root at a precise depth in preparation for harvesting).

By 2020 they had increased their output from 8.5 million seedlings per year to 11.5 million. Since then, they have increased it further to 16.6 million and they have a target output of 17 million. “We reduced the spacing between bed centers from 162 cm to 160 cm. A difference of 2 cm might not seem like much, but it allowed us to add another bed to the nursery. That alone increased our capacity by 800,000 trees,” Patrick says. “Our tractors are on narrow 270-mm or 300-mm crop tyres and we use highly accurate GPS and implement steering to perform all our tasks precisely.”

Early on Patrick began working with Trimble to achieve the repeatable cm-level accuracy that the nursery requires. “We have our own base station to provide RTK signal correction, so we do not have to depend on any network. Our implements are all mounted rather than trailed, to reduce the space needed for turns on the headlands.

Each implement is fitted with a Trimble NAV receiver and a steering cylinder driven by a proportional valve. This gives them the ability to adjust according to signals from the tractor’s GPS.”

The system is not cheap to install. Patrick says it costs about $85,000 to kit out each tractor and implement with GPS, but it delivers both precision and speed. For example, spraying the full farm used to be done over several months by two or three labourers with backpacks. Now it can be done with the hooded spraying unit in 12 hours. “Our rows are on 9-cm spacings. This means that when we use our lateral trimmer to trim the seedlings’ side roots, the discs are making cuts 4.5 cm from the plants. We can do that at 7 kph.”

Murray Nurseries uses three Fendt 300 Series tractors, a Fendt 313 and two Fendt 312s to operate their precision implements.

Patrick says they got their first Fendt in 2014, and they added the other two as the operation has expanded. He says they never hesitated to get another Fendt each time it was necessary to add another tractor to the fleet. “We bought our first Fendt because of the Vario hydrostatic drive. We believe it is the most accurate and reliable transmission available. Fuel economy is not a big issue for us because each tractor only does about 350 hours/year, but we really need the accuracy to grow 17 million trees in a limited space. “It is easy to monitor and run our equipment with the Fendts. The implements all require different oil flows, which we have pre-programmed so we can easily move the tractors between them. The Fendts also have a very good power-to-weight ratio, which is very important to us. We require a reasonable amount of horsepower, but we want our tractors to be as light as possible to reduce compaction and provide good maneuverability.”

The Fendts 300 Varios also work very well with Murray Nurseries’ Trimble guidance system. Each tractor has automatic steering as well as a Trimble touchscreen, which Patrick says provides a nice logical operating system.

“Our Fendt 313 uses a hydraulic proportional valve for auto steer. One of the 312s uses electric auto steer and the other 312 came with Fendt’s auto steer ready setup.

“All of them work well but the auto steer ready tractor is the nicest. It integrates smoothly with the Trimble guidance and engages quickly,” Patrick says.

Murray Nurseries has worked with Vantage NZ to develop its high-intensity, high-accuracy seedling nursery. They have purchased all of their Fendt tractors from TRC in Feilding, who also provide all the back-up support they need.