‘We supply weighing solutions and weighbridges for agricultural market’

Peter King, general manager, Griffith Elder, speaks on the agricultural solutions the UK-based company provides for the Nigerian market in this interview with OLUYINKA ALAWODE, recently in Lagos.

Business

Griffith Elder designs and manufactures accurate rugged weighbridge, scales, weighing systems and software for commerce, industry and agriculture worldwide. We supply weighing solutions and weighbridges for the agricultural market. So, for every part of the chain, there is something we can offer to farmers to monitor the weights and make sure that everything is run efficiently

Products

We have the weigh beams which have a lower costs and lighter weights, they can be used by farmers and moved from site to site. They can be used by a group of farms, so that the farmers can purchase them at lower costs and share them to weigh their products.

We also have the full size weighbridges – the reason this is particularly good for agriculture is that one does not need great amount of civil works and ground works to install. This new design of weighbridge can be installed directly onto the ground with ramps fixed at each end. The weighbridge is not fixed to the ground, but is held in position by the ramps. This new design makes moving the weighbridge very fast; with each section weighing only 2.2 tons, they can be lifted and moved easily using a standard forklift truck.

One such weighbridge was installed on an airfield near Cambridge, England. In addition, this particular weighbridge included specialist, custom-designed software to weigh bales of straw. The owner gets a report every evening detailing how much straw has come in each day, the average weight of each bale on each load, and the dry matter content of the load. A tally of the total amount of straw stored at the site is available at the click of a button.

The whole weighbridge, including the laptop computer and printer, runs from a 600 watt solar panel, as there is no electricity on site. A small port-a-cabin houses the computer and weighbridge indicator, which can all be lifted directly onto a truck for removal to a different site. This compact solution makes the whole system fully portable and it can be dismantled and re-instated in a matter of a few hours. We have got many other agricultural solutions, some for bagging of products.

Recording

We provide complete solutions with software, bespoke for agriculture, data can be entered into the software as the vehicle is being weighed and once being weighed, that data gets stored and they can be used later in the report. You can use excel or other databases over a network

Location

Griffith-Elder is based in Cambridge in the UK; all of our products are designed and manufactured by us in the UK. We presently distribute directly to Nigeria. We have a distributor in Nigeria but only operating for the mining sector, so we are seeking distributors for the agricultural sector. At the moment, potential buyers can come to us directly, we would ship from the UK to the port in Nigeria.