Why Bale When You Can Pellet --- Premos 5000 Wins Agritechnica Gold

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Opinion

Author’s Note: Okay, there are probably plenty of reasons you should bale instead of pellet (like: we don’t really have a choice yet). It’s just, well, it’s not every day that I get to use a noun as a verb in a headline. 

Last week I stumbled upon one of the coolest tweets I’ve seen all year. All the way from Hanover, Germany, Krone’s Premos 5000 has won an Agritechnica Gold.

Photo Courtesy of Krone
Photo Courtesy of Krone

Coming from the Latin word, premere (meaning “pressing”), the Premos 5000 is the world’s first pellet harvester. Like a baler, the machine starts by picking up a swath through a 2.35m pick-up (7’8″, for those of us who still don’t understand metric). It is then fed through two rollers by an 800mm (31″) wide conveyor belt.

The rollers, with rows of alternating teeth and holes, press the swath into molds, forming pellets 16mm (0.6″) in diameter.

The pellets are then fed out of the rollers by internal augers and onto a conveyor to the hopper. The hopper can support up to 5000kg (11023lb) of pellets and an output of up to 5000kg/h.

According to Krone, the energy demand of the Premos 5000 is half that of a stationary pelleting system, because it “eliminates energy-intensive pre-treatment.” Plus, it saves a whole lot of steps for those interested in using their own feed for pellets.

Though it would be neat to take one of these outfits for a spin, it doesn’t seem the opportunity will present itself in the near future. The unit is not available in North America and so far, there are no distribution plans for our continent.

And though I, like you, have loads of questions about the machine, I reckon we might just have to head to Germany to see it for ourselves.


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