Local Harvesting Equipment

This page catalogues both small and large walnut harvesting equipment used by growers in New Zealand. The owners of the equipment shown here are happy to share information with fellow NZ Walnut Industry Group members. To make an enquiry use our Contact Us Page.

Walk Behind Harvesters   Towable Harvesters

Small Self Propelled Harvesters    Large Harvesters   Other Harvesters

Hand Held Walnut Harvesters

These hand held wire basket type rollers are a very effective way to harvest walnuts. Most New Zealand walnut growers started with this method. They can be purchased from this web site www.lourdangrove.co.nz/nutharvester

Walk Behind Walnut Harvesters

Prebble Solid Disk Harvester These harvesters are constructed of stainless steel tubing and have solid plastic disks that pick up the nuts. This type of disk doesn’t collect as much orchard floor rubbish as spiky disks do.	Closeup of solid disks. Solid disk walnut harvesters are used by Ian Sheerin, Jenny and Malcolm Lawrence, Graeme and Barbara Nicholas, and  others
Bag A Nut Harvester Bag A Nut’s are made in Florida and very popular in the United States.	Above, an older style of Bag A Nut being used near Geraldine. They pick  walnuts up well and are quite common on both walnut and hazelnut orchards in NZ. They work well in combination with a washing system that can remove, leaves etc. Alan Mathewson of  The Hazelnut Co. acts as our local agent/importer.

Towable Walnut Harvesters

These pictures show various arrangements for towing a Bag A Nut harvester. Tim Armitage and Hugh Stevenson use systems like this.

Small Self Propelled Walnut Harvesters

A simple walnut harvester mounted on a Kubota F1900 mower. This harvester uses solid disks and the nuts are collected in bins that go on the front. Ian Sheerin operated this machine for the first time in the 2015 season and says it’s effective and doesn’t pick up much rubbish in the way of twigs, leaves etc.	Under construction in the workshop. This picture shows the position of the collecting bins on the front. Close up of bins, fingers and disks
AMB Rousset Harvester No 2 This small French self propelled harvester efficiently collects nuts and expels rubbish. It harvests the walnuts into bins. It is very efficient and is suitable for orchards under 10 ha. One downside is that the bins fill quickly and need to be manually emptied.	Russel Hurst, near Oamaru, and Graeme and Barbara Nicholas, near Lincoln, have these machines. Andrew and Jo Horsbrugh are the local agents for AMB Rousset equipment walnut harvesting machines. Their phone number is 03 347 9414
Locally Made Walnut Harvester This machine is mounted on an old Kobota F1900 mower and was made by Nelson Hubber at West Melton.	The walnuts are picked up by a “Bag A Nut spiky roller”. At the time the video was made the machine was in it’s third year of use and it  harvested 7.5 tonnes for the season.

Large Walnut Harvesters

AMB  Rousset Harvesters  Andrew and Jo Horsbrugh’s new machine at a parade in West Melton.	Frank and Margaret Brenmuhl’s machine arrives at their property in  Aylesbury.
Clive Marsh and Heather North’s privately imported machine at their property on Shand’s road near Lincoln.	Conditions in France are very similar to ours and so these AMB Rousset walnut harvesters fit into our New Zealand situations very well. Andrew and Jo Horsbrugh are New Zealand agents for all AMB Rousset equipment. Their phone number is 03 347 9414

Innovative Local Machine.

This machine is owned by Otto and Valda Muller of Cromwell and was designed and made by Otto. It puts its collection “wings” (ie inverted umbrella) under the trees and then vibrates the tree and funnels the nuts into collection bins at the centre of the canopy thus eliminating the need to pick the nuts up off the ground . Thus it replaces the shaker, sweeper and harvester with one machine.  If you’d like to find out more about this machine contact Valda, her phone number is 027 446 6112 (evenings are best)

Otto and Valda would be willing to negotiate a price for this to be developed and make it available to other growers. A web search suggests that it would meet criteria for international patent.

---

 

Other Harvesters

We were excited to find this harvester which is made by Harvester Concepts Ltd in Fielding. It’s well priced and can fit in front of a variety of tractors. The collection bin lifts up and over the machine to deliver the harvest. As far as we know no-one uses one of these for walnut harvesting. It has an efficient pick up system so it would be necessary to have equipment that can remove leaves etc once the nuts have been collected. It is designed to pick up a range of nuts so is ideal for those growers with different varieties of nut trees. To find out more see Harvester Concepts web site .

---

 

This is a German harvester that as far as we know hasn’t been used for walnuts in New Zealand but it’s a very neat looking machine. It’s primarily been designed to pick up fruit off the ground like cider apples but it has a kit that is added for walnuts. It would be important to find out if it will remove leaves, sticks and rubbish. The company that makes them is called Feucht Obsttechnik and this is the link to the web page for the machine pictured here. Basil and Trudi Meyer have visited the factory and can help you for more information. Phone 03 317 8130

 

---

 

Contact us if you’re in New Zealand and have an interesting Walnut Harvester that we can feature on theses pages.

---