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Product Focus: Gessner Landmaster planter

Gessner is proving a point in the market with its durable Landmaster planter, writes Harrison Hunkin

The Gessner Landmaster in folding position
Agronomist Andrew Arthur says the Gessner Landmaster is the best broadacre planter he has ever used
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This might sound like a big call but agronomist and farmer Andrew Arthur of Arthur Agriculture is adamant that the Gessner Landmaster is the best broadacre planter he has ever used.

That’s right, folks, another Australian-made product getting the tick of approval by local farmers.

Arthur, who runs his own agricultural consultancy business out of Goondiwindi, Queensland, has been using Gessner products for eight years through his clientele until deciding recently that enough was enough – he must have his own.

The build quality and longevity of the Landmaster is what makes it special, Arthur says. In fact, he believes the Landmaster is a product that his grandchildren will be using one day.

“The first thing people look at when buying machinery – including us – is value for money and Gessner, I believe, has always made machinery that lasts,” he says.

“We run an agricultural consultancy business as well as our own farming enterprise, operating in a pretty tough area (Goondiwindi). We have some pretty extreme weather conditions out here.

“Because we operate in such an extreme industry with extreme weather conditions, we look for a machine that’s going to tough it out,” Arthur says. “Through our consultancy business, we’ve worked with many other brands and I’ve seen many of these machines just fall to bits.”

Arthur also farms grain, which he says is a tough task in Goondiwindi due to the dry, compact soil.

“We do a thing called ‘moisture seeking’ – it’s when we plant into six to eight inches of dry, hard, compact soil,” he says.

With changing weather cycles, the moisture-seeking process has become more common, now happening six to seven years out of a decade.

“We do it very regularly and I see machines just simply break; they just can’t handle it over a period of time,” Arthur says.

“A machine can do it for a few seasons but the Gessners seem to be able to do it year after year with precise seed-placement, while being extremely reliable and requiring minimal maintenance.”

Such a large machine needs a fair bit of grunt to pull it, so Arthur and his team use a John Deere 8360 tracked tractor and consistently plant at 11km/h.

Gessner Industries Toowoomba manager Ray Finnie says the Landmaster is the company’s most popular broadacre machine and, like Arthur, believes this is because of its durable construction, including heavy-duty 3-bar frames built from 100 x 100 x 9 RHS or 178 x 178 x 9 RHS.

“We get a lot of feedback from customers who are extremely happy with the Landmaster’s penetration ability and its ability to dig down to nine or 10 inches and not break down,” he says.

Standard Landmaster configurations range from 12m to 24m with tine spacing ranging from 333mm to 500mm. Custom configurations are also available.

Hydraulic single-fold and double-fold options are available, as are various linkage options depending on machine size and customer specifications. These include three-point linkage for smaller machines and floating trailing hitches applicable to all models. 

The Patriot side on
The Gessner Patriot made its public debut at Henty field days

Gessner Patriot planter

Alongside the flagship Landmaster the Aussie company has been showcasing its new, smaller Patriot planter on the field days circuit.

The recently released Patriot is also Australian-built and comes available in six frame configurations with the seven-section, 36m Patriot being Gessner’s biggest.

Each frame features three 100mm x 100mm x 9mm toolbars, purpose-built to accommodate row-spacing.

The Patriot features a parallelogram tine row unit that features a versatile shank with single, dual, paired-row and liquid injection outlet options, an underframe working height of 900mm and semi-pneumatic V-shaped press wheels.

Patriot designer and engineer Paul Anderson says the Patriot is aimed at farmers who plant at 250-300mm row spacings at a depth of up to 150mm and was designed to fit a void in the market.

“We had a simple machine and a very complex machine and we felt the Patriot would fit nicely in the middle,” he says.

“We are trying to push into markets we haven’t been before, such as southern New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, where we feel the patriot is more suited.”

Making its first public appearance this year at AgQuip Field Days, the patriot is Gessner’s newest product and was inspired by the fact that there are limited machines of similar design and use.

The Farms & Farm Machinery team also caught up with Gessner owner Michael O’Connor at the Henty Machinery Field Days to talk about the new Patriot, which was front and centre at their site.

“Everything is Australian-made, made in Toowoomba, and we believe that its quality and very competitive price is the selling point of our products,” O’Connor says.

“The Landmaster has been built for 12 years, and we believe that the first Landmaster changed hands this year,” he says, “so farmers when they buy our equipment know they are buying a piece of machinery that should be on their farm for decades. It doesn’t matter if it’s a seeder or a deep-ripper or even our cotton gear.”

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