If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it either. But that's the sort of thing that happens at the Mystery Creek Fieldays agricultural expo and show in New Zealand. A futuristic bad-boy mower. Manufactured in New Zealand. You gotta be kidding!

Well .. let's back up a bit.

When I saw my first, brown, hairy berry I didn't know if I should shave it or eat it.  Since then, systematic genetic selection and breeding has transformed those berries into a global, billion dollar, fruit industry. And the berries have done a Cinderella – they've changed from humble Chinese Gooseberry to global, iconic, Kiwifruit. Kiwis pioneered modern Kiwifruit breeding, farming and production, turning large tracts of cattle pasture into orderly rows of vines. In the 1970's, hundreds of New Zealand orchardists and fruit growers planted Kiwifruit vines – only a few in some cases; in others, it was acre upon acre. The new boom industry attracted the usual early adopters, nay-sayers, dreamers, and consolidators.

Now, if you saw a boom industry springing up on the other side of the road, across from your home, you'd soon be complaining about the disruption to your lifestyle and normal services. But engineers, surveyors, precision machining shops, specialist chemical and agricultural resellers, and farming equipment manufacturers are different. They don't complain. They jump on the band wagon. They know that the boom industry is going to need "stuff," and they do their best to supply that stuff and dominate the boom industry's supply chains

Kiwifruit vines are just like grape vines. It's terrifically bad husbandry to let weeds and long grass grow under the vines or between the rows.  When that happens, plant pests and diseases can shrivel the yields faster and more permanently than a rates rise by the Governor of the Reserve Bank.  No wonder the mowing equipment manufacturers did a roaring business. Shareholders and management teams from three of those manufacturers eventually combined to form Trimax Mowing Systems.

Genetic engineers and agronomists perform systematic selection in plant stock. The equivalent, in precision engineering, is process design, variability tolerances, and robotic tooling. This is what makes Trimax Mowers so good.

But Trimax Mowers are not merely functionally excellent. When you look at a Trimax Mower you can see from its thoughtful design that Trimax engineers took the trouble to incorporate attractive appearance and modularity in a surprising number of ways. It all complements the functionality of the mower and compliments the, smiling, owner's judgement in buying a Trimax Mowing Systems product. What owner wouldn't smile when hooking a gleaming Trimax Mower to the back of a tractor.

A private company, Trimax Mowing Systems exports to USA, UK and Australia. Trimax Mowing Systems' product range includes tractor powered grass mowing equipment for safety conscious schools, demanding golf courses, park lands, sports grounds, turf farms, and rough roadsides.

Now for the ERP systems part! Trimax Mowing Systems has purchased Epicor Software Corporation's Vantage manufacturing ERP system from COGITA. Specialising since 1989 in complex ERP software systems for blue chip manufacturers, COGITA's online support and professional services made COGITA the supplier of choice for ERP systems and services at Trimax Mowing Systems. To learn how COGITA's specialist, long term, support services might be able to help your business, read the FAQs by clicking here.

COGITA Digital Media Archives 2006. All rights reserved.