Page 29 - Vol.36-No.6 issue

NEWS

80% OF EUROPEAN DEALERS EXPERIENCE THE IMPACT OF

COVID-19, 70% EXPECT A SIGNIFICANT DECREASE IN TURNOVER

Results of a quick scan survey by CLIMMAR on the COV- The outlook for the upcoming months is pessimistic with
ID-19 situation amongst European dealers show that 80% regards to the development of the order book and the turn-
of the participants are affected. Especially sales of new over of the dealer companies. More than 70% of them indi-
machinery are affected. Looking forward, 70% of the par- cate that they expect a significant decrease, of which 16% of
ticipants foresee a significant turnover and order book de- companies even expect a decrease of more than 25%.
crease in the next two months.
In total, no less than 660 dealerships from 14 different
countries responded to the survey. This gives a good indi-
cation of the effects and impact of the COVID-19 crisis on
their businesses. The survey shows that the effects of the
COVID-19 crisis are strongly felt by dealer companies and
distributors in the European agricultural machinery and
equipment sector. Around 80% of the respondents experi-
ence “limited” to “a lot” consequences. The main “pain” is
felt in the sales department of dealer companies with sales
of new machines stagnating in particular. The sale of used
machinery has also been affected significantly, but less than
the sales of new machines.
The effects of the crisis on the repair and maintenance Circle 37 on enquiry card
workshop turnover are less big. Dealer companies in gener-
al still have enough work here. This is partly due to the fact
that customers, especially in the agricultural sector, simply NEW TECHNOLOGY TO
had to do their Spring work, and machines were used to the
full extent for that. Repair and service of these machines INCREASE PRODUCTION
have therefore been executed consistently and that has en-
sured that work in the workshops of the dealer companies in OF GRAPE
general remains at acceptable levels.

California startup Vinergy, Inc. is a powering change in
the industry, beginning with new technology applications
that could improve the profitability of table grape farms by
nearly 40 percent.
The Vinergy Cart and Energy Wheelbarrow from Bakers-
field, California startup Vinergy, Inc. are rechargeable elec-
tric implements that increase the amount of time grapes can
be picked by significantly reducing the most time-consum-
ing, labor-intensive and riskiest part of the harvest: trans-
porting fruit from the vine to the end of the row.
Pickers lose an average of 7-10 minutes per trip down
the grape row using such traditional picking methods. This
means the average team of pickers loses 2 hours of picking
time per day. Vinergy products allow pickers to consolidate
In general around 45% of the dealer companies also state and speed up trips thereby reducing labor costs, downtime,
that they expect to need (financial) support to survive the and injuries.
crisis. Contrary to that, 13% of the companies clearly in-
dicate that they don’t need aid measures and can manage For example, a standard eight-person crew can harvest
without. The follow-up question as to what kind of aid meas- about six boxes of table grapes per hour. During a normal
ures are needed, then clearly shows that companies mainly day, that crew could pick 192 boxes for an approximate la-
want acceptable conditions for credit from the banks, but bor cost of $4.33 per box.
also favorable conditions for stock financing from manufac- With a capacity of 16 boxes, using the Vinergy Cart can
turers and machine suppliers. significantly increase yield with a relatively small labor cost
increase of just 12.5 percent, resulting in a labor cost of just
$2.66 per box, a reduction of 38.6 percent. Real-world re-
sults have seen an average of $1.00 per box savings and as
high as $2.30 per box. Circle 38 on enquiry card

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