We’ve been to Denmark to see where Samson Agro slurry tankers, muck spreaders
and attachments are made, and discuss plans for the UK and Ireland. 

KEEPING IT BRIEF

  • Founded by blacksmith Thorvald Pedersen in 1943. First trailers and spreaders produced in the 1950s. Samson was bought by the Glerup family in 1999.
  • The company acquired its muck and slurry machinery knowledge by buying a number of Danish specialists. These included SAK (1973), JOS (1977) and Gøma (2021). 
  • The first slurry tanker was made in the 1980s. The company moved to the current site in 2005. The first Samson slurry tanker was made in 1964 (3.0m³).
  • The 18,500m² factory was built in 2005. It was extended with a 5,000m² workshop and 1,100m² workshop in 2018.
  • Current machines include the SP Ultimate (11-17m³), Flex II (16-20m³) and US (23-40m³) muck spreaders, and the TG (tandem axles 18-20m³ and triple axle 24m³) and PG II Genesis slurry tankers (tandem axles 18.0-20m³ and triple axles 21-35m³).
  • 85% of the roughly 1,000 machines produced each year is exported. Samson spreaders and tankers are shipped to far away destinations of North America, Canada, China, Japan and Australia.
Left to right: Samson production manager Sune Bjerg, training developer and instructor Kim Bennike, and UK and Ireland area sales manager David Bowman.

The impressive and squeaky-clean glass-fronted facility at company HQ and production site on the fringe of the Danish town of Viborg is a far cry from the dirty conditions the machines work in. We were met by David Bowman for a chat about muck and slurry related matters and a detailed tour of the production facility. With decades of experience with the TerraGator, two years ago, David, who took on the role of area sales manager for Samson Agro in the UK and Ireland, knows a thing or two about the muck spreading markets.

There are 450m of hoses on this 36m boom. Currently the common width in Scandinavia and the UK, the boom can also fold to work at widths of 20 and 24m. The plant handles 570,000m of hoses a year.

The numbers continue to increase (slurry tanker market up 5.0% in 2024), and Samson Agro made around 1,000 machines in 2024. This comprises roughly 250 slurry tankers and a similar number of muck spreaders, plus, around 500 attachments (incorporators, injectors, trailing shoe booms and slurry stirrers).

Vertical beaters for the muck spreaders are made in Viborg. Here the balance is being checked.

The Danish manufacturer does not make pto shafts, hydraulic valves, control boxes or axles, but 80% of the components for a Samson slurry tanker are produced in-house (closer to 90% with spreaders). With many 1980s machines still working, there are around 40,000 active part numbers. 11,000 of the fastest moving ones are stored at Viborg.

One of the presses was forming the plates for the Agromek launched 8.0m CDx arable land injector. And here it is on the machine.

Samson prides itself on the build quality. This starts with the steel, and the plant handles approx. 4,000t of high-quality Swedish and German steel every year. Steel thickness varies from 12mm up to 70mm for SHB4 drip hose boom wings and pivot points. Two fibre lasers tackle the small sizes while the larger widths are tackled by a plasma cutter.

There is plenty of space to store large parts outside. Many of the wings for the firm’s smaller booms are made in Poland.

Large parts are stored outside, and many of the wing sections for the firm’s smaller SB booms are made in Wolczyn (Poland) at the Pichon Industries plant, which Samson Agro acquired when it bought the French company in 2019. Injector press rolls are also made at the Polish facility, and it is expected that more parts will be produced there in the future. Smaller items are stockpiled in a 3,000m³ building at Viborg.

The plant has several robots. The sole job for this one is to weld unloading pump housings.

Making a tanker

Tankers and spreaders are built inside the 6,000m³ fabrications building where steel is laser cut, milled, welded and grinded by an 80-strong team divided over three shifts from Monday to Thursday, followed by a single stint on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

PG II Genesis tankers in the assembly building. The 31m³ model is popular in the UK. So too are the 28m³ and 35m³ models.

There were others, but to my mind the most interesting is bending the steel to make a slurry tank. The centre section of one of the two press bending (250t and 185t) machines can be removed to allow it to handle the 7.0m steel for the side frames of a spreader.

The Domex steel used to make a tanker body, combines a high strength with low weight. The tanker is just a vessel. It is not a vacuum tanker.

Having been cut to length, the steel sheets for a tanker body are rolled into shape for tack welding. When all the sections are in place, a welder completes the job. Secured at each end, when one side is complete, the tank is rotated to allow the welder to tackle it from the best position. The same technique is used for all tank sizes and they can make five at a time. We saw a welder working on a PGII 31. One tank is done at a time and this work continues around-the-clock. When finished, all of the welds are subjected to a thorough check.

New slurry tanks and spreader bodies are parked outside for three weeks and encouraged to rust as part of the process for the best paint adhesion.

It might come of a surprise to learn that all new tanker and spreader bodies stand outside for a minimum of three weeks to allow them to rust, and in a dry summer they spray them with water to encourage this. The rusty bodies are then sand-blasted before painting (painting is outsourced). This only removes so much of the oxidised layer. Steel can only rust once and the thin portion that remains provides added protection.

With the rust removed and the tank painted, it is now starting to look more like a tanker. This is a 19.5m³ PG II 20 Genesis.

Assembly building

There is enough space in the 6,000m³ assembly building to build a dozen slurry tankers and four muck spreaders at the same time. With the same cranes and equipment, all stations are flexible and depending on demand (spreaders are more seasonal), can also make eight spreaders and four tankers.

A wide range of different machines were in the assembly building, including a triple-axle US 340, the company’s largest spreader.

This assembling of tankers, spreaders and attachments in the same building has its limitations, and the building is close to maximum capacity. With this in mind, the company is in the process of improving the production and assembly flow of all its products. Crucial to this is a new 6,000m² production hall, a short walk from the existing building. Expected to be operational soon after this issue is published, it will expand the site’s production capacity by nearly a third. The main role for half of the multi-million-Euro-costing structure will be to make muck spreaders, as many as 10 at a time.

Axles and pump towers are pre-assembled in batches of 10. Having them ready helps to reduce final assembly times.
Samson makes around 500 attachments each year. SHB production will soon be transferred to the new production hall.

The focus for the other half (there is also a 100m² dealer training room) will be on the new Trailing Shoe Boom (TSB) previewed at Agritechnica 2023. A new welding robot and steel presses are coming, but the largest is a new cutting laser. 174m² of floor space has been earmarked for a machine that is so large and heavy that seven lorries will be needed to deliver it!

2024 was a busy year for Samson. As well as introducing a new version of its TSB2 (Trailing Shoe Boom), it also launched the IDs, CDf and CDx (pictured) disc injector ranges.
Prior to 2022, final checks to all new tankers and spreaders were done during the assembly process. It is now done inside a dedicated 1,000m² building. It takes one man a full day to check up to 100 different points, before signing off a machine.
The concrete in the new production hall is 35cm thick where the machine tooling will stand. The rest is all 25cm.

Moving spreader production to the new building will free up space in the existing production building to make more slurry tankers.

Tanks are filled with water in the test area and the boom, in this case a 36m SHB4, is working as it should. It took just three minutes for the 10,000l/min pump to fill the tank on this PG II 31 Genesis. The high flow rate and pressure on a PG of 15.5m3/min at 4.5 bar accelerates the slurry to the end of the boom quickly. The boom’s empty weight of 6.4t increases by 1.2t when full of liquid. The rear linkage on the tanker can lift 9.0t.

Steven Vale

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