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MAJOR SAVINGS FROM AUTOMATIC BATCH DRYING ON
HEXHAM FARM HELP COUNTER LOW GRAIN PRICES
Depressed grain prices forced a Northumbrian farming business to take a hard look at the cost of grain drying. Sending their grain away to be dried, at a cost of £7 - £11 a ton, did not seem viable with the finished product selling at around £50 per ton, so brothers Philip and Shaw Eggleston of Chollerton Farm near Hexham decided to dry their grain themselves and in August took delivery of a new mobile batch grain dryer – the OPICO Magna 2000 QF Automatic.
The Eggleston family farm a total of 1000 acres of medium to heavy land at Chollerton and Thornham Hill, 11 miles away. Eight hundred acres are in cereal production and they operate a minimum tillage system.
Harvesting started in the last week of July and finished at the end of September, using a New Holland TF44 rotary combine with a capacity of 25 tons per hour. They dried 2500 tons of grain with the new drier at an estimated cost of £2.75 per ton inclusive of handling, generator hire and fuel. The savings – estimated at £10,000 approximately per annum – should be substantial.
 The new OPICO Magna 2000QF grain dryer holds approximately 20 tons and has a throughput of 10 tons per hour. It is linked to a 20-ton capacity grain bin and a generator is used to provide the electricity supply rather than using a tractor, which would then be out of action for other purposes.
The mobile dryer does not take up much space and can be moved to another suitable site out of season thus releasing prime space for other aspects of the farming operation. “Moving the mobile dryer is comparatively easy,” says Philip. “It only involves lifting the jacks and towing it away.”
The brothers found that the dryer was also easy to set up. “It only took half a day. It was just a question of manoeuvring it into position, screwing down the jacks to level it, fixing on the hopper and it was ready to work. Our original plan was to operate the dryer at each farm in turn but we decided that it was more time and cost efficient to bring the grain from Thornham Hill up to Chollerton to be dried.”
To load the dryer takes from15 to 20 minutes depending on crop type, and it takes around the same time to discharge. With a batch taking around two and a half hours to dry and cool, they were able to put through five batches -100 tons - in a 12-hour day.
The automatic operation meant that, with both dryer and hopper fully loaded, the grain drying could safely be left unmanned for several hours and this was a key benefit.
Other advantages were a rise in bushel weight, a high quality sample of grain because of the cleaner that is fitted to the OPICO Magna Dryer , and no weight deductions because the grain is sold dry.
Diesel fuel consumption for the burner, with the dryer on automatic operation, was approximately 100 litres per batch (£18) with the moisture content being reduced from 20% to 14.5%.
The Eco-Flo burner has an environmentally friendly direct burn, a feature that impresses the Egglestons. “The flame is not directed at the crop, it is to the side and the fan draws the heat in, reducing the risk of pollution and fire.”
The Magna’s burner fires into a Heat Core that is made up of Ceramic Bricks which retain the Heat thereby dramatically improving the efficiency of the Dryer and saving approximately 1/3 of the Burner fuel cost, the brothers found that you actually dry to around 15% when the burner cuts out. The heat retained by the bricks removes the extra half % leaving the final moisture content as 14.5%.
The cost of the dryer is approximately £30,000 and the operation should hopefully see a saving of around £10,000 per annum.
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