Goldacres is making some of its most popular sprayer features standard on its Prairie Pro Series 2 sprayer as it puts the finishing touches on its design
Reacting to the market and making adjustments based on customer feedback is helping local manufacturer Goldacres perfect its marquee new sprayer.
Goldacres has been putting the finishing touches on all four models of its previously announced Prairie Pro Series 2 trailed sprayer.
All Goldacres machines are manufactured in Ballarat and the company’s sales manager Stephen Richards says this allows for a hands-on approach in meeting customer needs.
“The clear advantage that Goldacres has is that we can make what people want,” he says.
“We’ve always been fairly reactive to the market, because we’re Australian made and we do all our engineering in house, so it’s probably a little bit easier for us to make changes.
“The customers love it, and I don’t think you could get that sort of service with an imported machine.”
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First Prairie Pro Series 2 on the assembly line
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The Prairie Pro Series 2 is available in four sizes, ranging from 5,000L with a 30m boom up to the 10,000L with a 48m boom, which will be the largest trailed sprayer Goldacres has ever produced.
All four are at different stages of their production and testing process and Richards estimates they will be in customer hands and on Australian farms by midyear.
The smallest of the range, the 5,000L, is currently being assembled by Goldacres’ R&D team, Richards says, with the meticulous process of fine tuning and documenting every element including hose links and bolts under way.
Another model – the 8,500L sprayer with a 36m boom – is in the production line. The 10,000L model has been undergoing on-farm testing while the fourth model – a 6,500L sprayer with 36m boom – has been doing the rounds at field days.
“We started first testing the 10,000L machine near Horsham in Victoria and now it’s up at Griffith in New South Wales,” Richards says.
“It’s getting a lot of hours, just getting put through its paces and there’s been a few little things we’ve had to update and change, but it’s going really well and the customer is happy with it.
“I think the 6,500L is probably the most popular model we will sell.
“That was the second one we built, and it was built to run around field days, and it’s probably our hero sprayer. It’s just a really popular model.
“It’s been over to Bordertown. We did a show over there with it and showed a few customers and it’s also been to the Lucindale Field Days.”
Goldacres opened a third retail store in Bordertown, South Australia, early last year.
One of the major areas Goldacres has prioritised with the Prairie Pro Series 2 is standardising the features which had been most popular with customers on the original series.
“Dealers will put a stock order in to accommodate a sale three months down the road, so you try and make a lot of these features standard, so they don’t have to change anything when they sell the machine,” Richards says.
“We really focused on the fact every machine had induction hoppers, for example, and every machine had airbags if it was over a certain size, so that’s now standard.
“After years of hearing what customers like and what they don’t like, we think we’ve made a machine that they’re going to love.
“All the changes we made on this model are from customer feedback so there should be some pretty happy people.”
Richards says a lot of technology and features which had previously been exclusive to the self propelled sprayer market, such as the RivX boom, have been opened up to the trailed sprayer market by being available on the Prairie Pro Series 2.