Driving impression: Tanco Autowrap 1300 EH handler-mounted bale wrapper Tanco Autowrap believes the ‘wrap and stack’ version of its 1300 EH wrapper, which can be mounted onto front-end loaders, telehandlers and wheeled loaders/shovels, offers a lower cost alternative to a combi baler in the field, with similar reductions in required manpower and machinery.
Wrap out in the field or wrap at the stack? It’s one of those topics that divides opinion among farmers and contractors who bale silage. Market movement over recent years has certainly favoured the former, with the development of combi and integrated
baler/wrappers that cut man hours and machinery requirements by wrapping on the same machine immediately after baling. But, of course, there are some key downsides to in-field wrapping, the chief among these being the real potential for damaging the wrapped bales when they are placed back on field stubble, stacked onto trailers and then handled again from trailer on to stack.
And with any of these operations, as soon as the wrap is ‘holed’, silage quality is compromised. Irish wrapper maker Tanco went so far as to build its own integrated baler/wrapper, the Bale Processor, back in the early part of the decade. That project is currently on hold, though, as the firm says the future of wrapping remains as a separate task to baling, citing baler and wrapper output advantages and the reduced risk of wrap damage as the main reasons behind its decision to focus on wrappers rather than combi or integrated outfits. Moreover, the company also reckons that one of its more recent wrapper developments represents a useful alternative to the wrapper/baler for those who wish to carry out their own silaging and achieve similar time savings over the whole silage-making process.
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