The Lambertini family's farm and contracting business near Bologna relies entirely on ROPA technology for sugar beet harvesting.
The Lambertinis harvested sugar beet with a Panther 1 from 2017 until 2023. A Panther 2S will be used to harvest sugar beets in 2024. Before the "felines" came to Bologna from Bavaria, sugar beets were harvested using the two-phase method. The ROPA Taurus was first deployed for the 2022 campaign.
The arrival of the truck conveyor was properly celebrated in Italy. Werner Hofbauer, who operated the Taurus, was warmly welcomed by the Lambertini brothers Daniele and Luciano who served traditional Italian salami and the best white and red wines from the region, including Lugana made of the famous Turbiana grape variety.
ROPA Taurus is the best solution
50 m³ bunker volume
High temperatures, which often prevail during the sugar beet harvest period in Italy, pose a major challenge. Beets are often loaded directly from the beet harvester onto trucks to ensure that the crop reaches sugar factories fresh from the field without any loss of quality. However, this process poses certain logistical challenges, as downtimes for both trucks and the harvester cause direct costs and should therefore be avoided by all means.
For the Lambertinis, the ROPA Taurus is the best solution here. With a bunker volume of about 50 m³, it is able to collect an entire truckload of beets from the harvester and then store them temporarily.
Using the Taurus in this system has several advantages for farmers
First, the Panther can achieve significantly higher area performance because the machine can harvest without interruption and does not lose any time for bunker unloading at a standstill. Second, the trucks do not have to wait, as the Taurus can fill an entire truck with one bunkerload in under a minute. Empty runs of the sugar beet harvester become history, as do unnecessary truck downtimes.
Thanks to its front shield, the Taurus can immediately level out leaf residues and soil that can accumulate during direct loading of trucks due to the high cleaning performance of the loading conveyor.
The Taurus has a further advantage for the fields that do not have any direct access to truck-friendly roads. The transporter can easily cover the distance to the next suitable road.
Particularly soil-friendly transport
The Taurus also enables particularly soil-friendly transport of the sugar beet crop. Especially under wet conditions, the Taurus with its R-Balance chassis, crab steering and 1050 Michelin tires outperforms any tractor-trailer transport combination.
The Taurus can also be used to create piles. Thanks to the side unloading conveyor, it can easily unload beets in piles like a Tiger or a Panther. It leaves neither traces nor compaction under a pile, which could later impair the loading process. The required dimensions of a pile can be achieved without any problems.
The Taurus also fulfils the traditionally high demands for ROPA machines in terms of user-friendliness. The transporter is available with an automatically activated bunker camera, for example. With its help, the operator can monitor the whole bunker filling process during overloading. As soon as the driver reverses, the rear view camera is displayed on the monitor. A further camera monitors the loading conveyor and is displayed on a separate screen.
The Lambertinis' success proves them right. More and more farmers from the Bologna region prefer the combination of Panther and Taurus, so the Lambertinis' number of clients is steadily increasing. Panther and Taurus - a powerful combination!
For more information on the Taurus in the product presentation, click here: ROPA TAURUS