710477Development of an industrial standard selfgenerating electric powered harvesting and pruning knife for tall palms and trees.ClosedGRD Proof of ConceptInnovate UKHarvesting Ltd, an agricultural engineering company is developing an electric powered mechanical harvesting knife for the palm oil industry. Palm oil is by far the highest-yielding oil crop, producing between seven and ten times more than its nearest rivals (soybean, rapeseed and sunflower). Oil palm takes ten times less land to produce the same volume of oil as soybean. However, a farmer can manage 200 hectares of soybean on his own, whereas he will not be able to handle more than 8 hectares of oil palm, as it is difficult to harvest mechanically. Harvesting is a very labour intensive task, as the fruit bunches mostly weighing around 25kg have to be manually cut by a harvester wielding a blade attached to a long pole that can be up to 25ft in length. This pole is heavy and the cutting action difficult to control along such a length. In recent years a petrol mechanical knife has been available but is only suitable for palms no higher than 15 feet or equivalent to 7 to 8 years in growth. With the majority of palms producing fruit for more than twenty years, only around 30% of the available harvesting stock can be serviced with this particular mechanical knife. This general difficulty and reliance on pure human effort for harvesting the majority of the crop leads to losses of around 15% in crop yield and numerous back and neck injuries among the labour force. Harvesting Ltd new implement, with its weight efficient design and long length will contribute significantly towards reducing the amount of human effort needed to harvest the fruit bunches and simultaneously reduce the significant crop loss incurred in current harvesting. Overall, these positive results all contribute towards the spread and evolution of a more sustainable and responsible palm oil industry. Once development completed, manufacturing of this new implement will occur from a facility located on the Isle of Wight for export to all palm oil producing countries in South America, Africa and SE Asia.