58 years after being ceremonially handed over by company founder August Claas, the 200,000th Claas combine ever built, a 1968 Senator, has returned to active harvesting.
When handed to Scottish farmer John Steven on 16 August 1968, the Senator marked a major milestone for Claas, which had doubled its total combine production just six years after celebrating the 100,000th machine.
After decades of faithful service in Scotland, the veteran returned to the company´s UK headquarters in Saxham in 2025, where the technical service team restored it to full working order.
The historic combine was recently put to work on the farm of George and Freddie Gittus in Suffolk, where it harvested around 20 tonnes of wheat in just five hours.
It then moved to Honey Hill Farm at Little Saxham which is just behind the Claas UK HQ. Still farmed by the Mann family, the farm served as the original base when Bill Mann first started importing Claas machinery in the 1930s. Here, three generations of Claas combines worked side by side in the same field: a 1953 SF, the Senator and a Trion 720.
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