Based in Borris, Co Carlow, well-known Claas dealer Kelly’s of Borris has been appointed as the Irish agent for the Stoneless ATV towed stone collector.

New to the Irish and UK markets, the Danish-built machine is designed to take the manual element out of stone picking.

The machine in question, named the Stone Collector, has been developed by Søren Kristensen, after he spent several years manually picking stones by hand on his 400ha family farm.

After some thought, Søren developed a prototype solution in 2018 before further refining and entering commercial production in 2019.

The ATV stone collector has been designed for use with ATVs (500cc and above) and is designed to lift, load, transport and unload stones, all of which can be done from the ATV seat.

In its working position, the stone collector is offset to one side of the ATV.

The shovel can be raised and lowered via the control box on the handlebars of the ATV.

Located at the front of the machine, the stone shovel can hydraulically lift stones from 6cm to 50cm in diameter.

Running the on-board hydraulic pump is a small two-stroke petrol engine. Both the hydraulically assisted loading and unloading procedures are controlled using the handle bar-mounted electric control box.

The galvanised steel stone hopper weighs 400kg empty and can be loaded with up to 500kg of stones. The unit comes as standard with a tandem axle setup to help distribute the weight.

According to the firm, more than 300 units have been sold in Denmark in the last four years.

In more recent times, a UK and Irish dealer network has been established. Kellys of Borris has been appointed as main agent for all of Ireland, while Compass Tractors Ltd (Bridgewater), Turney Group (Bicester), Talis Amos Group (Evesham), Talis Amos Group (Pembrokeshire), Malpas Tractors (Wrexham), Brian Robinson Machinery (Northallerton) and G Marshall Tractors (Melrose, Scotland) will cater for the UK market.