August 21, 2003

A new Wrightson seed coating plant in Christchurch is outperforming expectations, says its designer.

The $1.5m plant was commissioned in December 2002 to produce the Wrightson Seeds range of Prillcote®, Superstrike® and Ultrastrike™ coated products. Robin Miller, the company’s Development Manager, Processing, says productivity and quality of output are well and truly meeting specifications.

"It has certainly exceeded its design capacity in some applications, and thorough efficacy testing on the coated seed shows the end product performs at least as well, and in most cases better than seed processed by the old plant."

The success of the plant has effectively positioned Wrightson Seeds to cope with high demand for coated seed at the peak of the season, he said.

Mr Miller travelled the world in sourcing components for the new plant, which he says is unique to the Southern Hemisphere. It features the rotostat process and Z-pattern elevators, and is almost fully enclosed as well as automated. Along with significantly increased throughput and quality, operator health and safety were among the primary design criteria — in the past, seed coating plants have typically been dusty and hazardous environments.

"Once processing is underway, the operator is safely isolated from it," said Mr Miller.

Seed coating is an integral part of today’s farming scene, providing a highly cost-efficient and environmentally friendly means of fertilising and protecting new crop and pasture plants. Seeds can be coated with fertilisers, trace elements, pesticides, fungicides and inoculants that increase nitrogen-fixing bacteria levels in soils.

The seed coating process was pioneered in New Zealand in 1964 by Coated Seeds Ltd, a joint venture between Wrightson’s then-parent company, Fletcher Challenge, and Nelson-based Newmans Group.

Extensive farm land development activity of the time saw growing demand for a reliable seed coating. Numerous approaches were unsuccessful until Coated Seeds developed Prillcote®, a process that was subsequently licensed in the USA and is still widely used in New Zealand in hill and high country oversowing programmes.

Since then, four unique Superstrike® coated products have been developed to protect and enhance the establishment of Brassica, Clover, Grass and Lucerne seedlings. This has occurred as farmers have placed a greater emphasis on pasture renovation and production.