FAE clears the land

Whenever the job requires dealing with woodland, FAE machinery comes in.

In 1989, Diego Scanzoni and his friends co-founded FAE, a small company manufacturing tree and shrub shredding machinery, in Fondo, in the north of Italy. In 1992, the company’s business expanded beyond the domestic borders and made first shipments to North America. Today, FAE Group has a large number of production locations and six worldwide branches in the USA, Europe and Russia.

The company’s product range is impressive. FAE Group produces mulching heads for trunk shredding with the maximum diameter of 40 cm and cutters for deforestation with the grinding diameter of up to 70 cm and the maximum working depth of 50 cm. The mulching and cutting equipment is available with a PTO driveshaft for tractor-towed implements or a hydraulic push frame to be attached to a dozer, a skid-steer loader or specialised forestry machinery. Besides, FAE Group offers road construction shredders and demining machinery.

The equipment is used for site preparation and land conversion into farmland, laying and maintenance of power lines and gas or oil pipelines, municipal infrastructure projects and public road system. Every year, new models are released and old ones are upgraded. The equipment reflects the company’s extensive experience and is designed to meet the needs of customers from all over the world.

‘A principal novelty of the recent 2 years is the Multitask product line’, says Sergey Korshunov, Chief Сommercial Officer of FAE RUSSIA. ‘A wide range of applications — from tree and shrub cutting and shredding to stump cutting and stone crushing — is implemented by the same fixed teeth rotor.’

The new lineup includes SFM (medium power) models and the leading SFH Series with the working depth of up to 40 cm and the working width ranging from 225 up to 250 cm, capable of destroying trees or stumps with the diameter of up to 45 cm or stones with the diameter of 35 cm. The equipment is outstandingly versatile, which makes it increasingly popular.

‘For tasks requiring a lot of work of the same kind, we offer field-specific high-performance mulchers and cutters’, says Sergey Korshunov.

This year, FAE is planning to introduce yet another novelty — the UMH MEGA mulching head with the working width from 225 up to 250 cm for 350 hp – 500 hp tractors to Russian customers.

‘The giant weighs over 6 tonnes’, says Sergey Korshunov, ‘it grinds standing trees of up to 50 cm in diameter and stumps of a similar diameter with the maximum working depth of 25 cm.’

Medium-power and high-power mulching heads enjoy the greatest popularity: UMM/S (Universal mulcher medium) are capable of grinding trees and shrubs of up to 35 cm in diameter and UMH/S (Universal mulcher heavy) — up to 40 cm in diameter. Medium-power mulching heads are coupled with 180 hp – 350 hp tractors, whereas the high-power ones can be towed by 240 hp – 450 hp tractors. The leading positions among the cutters are held by SSM (medium cutters for removal of stumps of up to 50 cm in diameter to the maximum depth of 40 cm) and SSH (heavy cutters for removal of stumps of up to 70 cm in diameter to 50 cm deep) models.

The performance and reliability of FAE equipment have conquered Russian farmers. Over the last two years, the number of FAE machines supplied to Russian farms has doubled.

‘Our customers are both small farms and large-scale agricultural holdings situated all over Russia, from Stavropol to Leningrad oblast and from Bryansk to Eastern Siberia’, says Sergey Korshunov.

Al Agro enterprise (Rostov oblast) is introducing new lands into rotation. The management of the company admits that it would be difficult to work efficiently without FAE equipment.

‘There are a lot of wide woodlines in our area’, says Maksim Svechkar, Chief Technical Advisor of Al Agro. ‘Nothing has been done about the stumps and shrubbery for decades. We clear them with FAE mulching heads and cutters. Currently, FAE offers the best price-quality ratio.’