Napier, MSCNewsWire, 22 March 2016 - A trade mission from Chile in May will visit the Renwick, Marlborough, headquarters of Langlois Machinery Services. The mission will evaluate the company’s automated vine stripper (pictured below) and cultivation implements.

The company is no stranger to the Americas having sold its automated and tractor mounted vine stripper into North America. Units are currently working in Texas, Washington State, and British Columbia.

The vine strippers were originally designed for New Zealand vineyards. They confer the immediate advantage of sidestepping most of the physical danger involved in humans manually stripping away the old vines.

The visit of the Chilean trade delegation is being viewed as carrying high significance. The reason is that during New Zealand’s first concerted production engineering export drives in the 1970s Chile was singled out as the obvious gateway to South America.

However a variety of non-trade obstacles intervened and only now is the focus being resumed.

Meanwhile, the value of the strippers in North America was recognised in the north west of the United States where vineyard labour is both scarce and expensive. Then as the cost-benefit of the automation was recognised, the demand for the units started coming from the southern states.

Mr Langlois gives high marks to his North American agent Blueline Manufacturing of Yakima. The company which specialises in grower automation saw the possibility for the New Zealand –developed vine strippers in North America and then went on to ensure full support.  Mr Langlois' Machinery Services in the heart of New Zealand's own vineyard region focuses on automated tractor-mounted equipment for vineyard applications.

These applications include vine stripping, vine shredding, tying, pruning, and weeding. These met the grower demand for cost-effective handling along with the need to reduce injuries incurred during the traditional labour intensive hands-on methods.

Walter Langlois cites this as an equal benefit to the quantified effect of The Langlois Stripper Shredder each stripper doing the work of 20 humans.

Though Chilean wines are well known in New Zealand, notably Black Cat, it is not widely understood that Chilean vineyards underpin much of the global wine output of today.

This is because a virulent pest attack devastated Europe’s vineyards which could only be restored by Chilean root stock which had been untouched by the phylloxera insect.

The Chilean delegation’s visit to New Zealand will prompt many production engineers to recall the first heady days of the New Zealand – Chile trade opportunity.

In that era, Chile was viewed as a South American version of New Zealand, complete with a largely English-speaking populace.

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