There is, of course, one obvious solution to the problem of what to do if you can’t find the piece of machinery you need to tackle a job in the vineyard.
And while “you make it yourself” may not be the answer for those of us without the necessary skills and experience, for Hattingley Valley’s hands-on vineyard manager Colin Hayward it was the only logical way forward.
With a background in farming and engineering, Colin set about making various pieces of equipment after rejecting commercially available alternatives because they weren’t up to the task he had in mind or the vineyard conditions he needed them to handle.
After designing and building various bits of vineyard-specific machinery, including a subsoiler, cultivator and picking platform, he put them to the test in Hattingley Valley’s vineyards, modifying them where necessary and proving that they worked in a real-world environment.
When friends and colleagues who saw the equipment in action began asking where they could get hold of it, Colin took the obvious step of setting up Vine Equip, which now supplies what he describes as equipment “designed to meet the specific needs and requirements of the varied UK environmental and soil conditions”. He added: “They are robust, easy to use, low maintenance designs and they have all been well tested here at Hattingley Valley.”
The project which was to become Vine Equip began when Colin was looking for a set of pallet forks with a hydraulic top link, mainly so that he could quickly and easily move vineyard heaters around during frost events.
“I found a set, but when they arrived I took one look at them and decided they really weren’t man enough for the job,” he said. “They really didn‘t look strong enough and so I went into my workshop and made a set I felt I could trust to do what I needed them to do without letting me down.”
The latest piece of equipment, and the most challenging to date, is a manure, woodchip and compost spreader launched last year at the Vineyard and Winery Show organised by Vineyard magazine and held at the Kent Event Centre at Detling.
The driving force behind the spreader was the soaring cost of fertiliser a year or so back. “I realised that the cows on the estate were producing manure which would do the same job,” said Colin. “What’s more, Hattingley Valley makes their surplus grape pomace available to the cows, which meant we could create a circular, environmentally friendly system.”
While there was a ready source of manure, Colin needed a vineyard-scale spreader to get it to where it was needed. “There was a number of spreaders available commercially, but while the manufacturers claimed they were suitable for vineyards, they didn’t do what we wanted them to,” he said.
Vine Equip’s MWC Spreader offers “a tried and tested, cost-effective and versatile solution” to the challenges, featuring a hydraulic moving floor with bolted slats and two horizontal beaters. The top of the range model adds features including a steering axle and aluminium grading boards.
“We rot the manure down for six months and spread it while the vines are dormant. It adds lots of nitrogen, improves water retention during dry summers, improves root growth and oxygenation and provides macro elements including boron, iron and molybdenum,” Colin explained.
“As well as having a beneficial impact on the grapes and on the environment, It is also more commercially sustainable,” he added. “And of course we don’t have to ship our ‘fertiliser’ hundreds of miles, with the additional impact that that has on the environment.
The Vine Equip range also includes a 1.25m wide lime spreader that features a hydraulic moving rubber floor, hydraulic adjusted door and hydraulic spreading table as standard, while optional features include an agitator, steering axle and cabin flow controller.
Colin, now 51, began working in agriculture about 30 years ago, but after five years he joined Tectonics UK, a Hampshire-based specialist marquee and grandstand seating manufacture, which is where he learned his engineering skills.
In 2006 he had another career change when he began working for Simon Robinson, founder and owner of Hattingley Valley, who planted the first vines on the estate two years later.
Colin did a range of jobs across the estate, including helping out in the vineyard, and in 2019 he was asked to take on the management of the vines, quickly realising that the machinery he needed to do the job simply didn’t exist in the form he wanted it.
“Our vines are planted on a chalk base but with a clay loamy topsoil and lots of flint,” he said. “We needed machinery that would deal with those conditions and was specifically designed for a vineyard environment. I soon found that if I wanted exactly the right bit of kit, I was better off making it myself.”
The Vine Equip pallet forks were the first things to emerge from Colin’s workshop, boasting a hydraulic top link and a lifting capacity of 500kg.
The pallet forks were followed by a 1.6m width triple K cultivator which features cutting blades in the centre to take out weeds at the same time.
Colin explained: “The cultivator features a unique design developed specifically for vineyards. It allows growers to control weeds without using herbicides, improve drainage or prepare the soil for cover crops.”
As with all the Vine Equip products, the HD-VY3 Cultivator has been put through its paces in Hattingley Valley’s vineyards. “It has been developed through years of actual vineyard experience,” said Colin. “It’s rugged, easily configured by the user and uses readily available wearing parts to keep maintenance costs down.”
Other Vine Equip machinery includes a subsoiler and a picking trailer which has been designed with safety straps that Colin was surprised to see didn’t feature on existing models.
Colin’s hands-on approach means that the models available can be adapted to an individual buyer’s requirements, creating bespoke machinery that will do exactly what the grower needs. “Here at Vine Equip we enjoy a challenge and are happy to talk to anyone with a particular issue that needs tackling,” Colin commented.
The MWC spreader is the piece of machinery Colin is most proud of. “I think it can be a game changer when it comes to taking a more sustainable approach to viticulture, particularly for growers with ready access to manure,” he commented. “It’s good for the environment, good for the grapes and good for the bottom line.”
Colin is supported in his Vine Equip operations by brother-in-law Andy Messenger, who looks after the business side of things but also has experience in engineering, and by Hattingley Valley vineyard consultant Romain Henrion.
“It’s a strong team that combines engineering know-how with vineyard expertise to create robust, tried and tested machinery that is designed to do the job efficiently and cost-effectively,” said Colin.
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