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Seed Treatment & Packing

For some customers we don’t clean their seed, we just treat and pack it for distribution, but this is a small percentage. From our two cleaning lines we directly operate three treatment lines and then there is a fourth which is stand alone.

Line One is dedicated to small bags and at the appropriate time of year is full time on Oilseed Rape. This line has the capability to pack 4kg to 25kg. Many of the products used on this line are high volume and we have the pump capability to deliver this service.

The treater on Line One is a Twin Vanguard, bought from and serviced by Bayer. This is the most accurate method of treating smaller batches of seed and is capable of treating a maximum of 6-800 bags per hour, although with Oilseed Rape it can be a lot less due to the high volume of seed treatment applied, which needs time to mix and dry.

Line Two and Line Three are the two main packing lines that between them pack almost all the seed we clean. Both are capable of packing into 25kg paper bags or into the larger tote bags, usually 500kg and 1000kg. The treaters used are both Evolutions bought from and serviced by Bayer. On these lines we have a minimum of twelve chemicals set up at any one time and available to apply at the flick of a switch. Treater capacity is up to thirty tonnes per hour.

Line Four is another Evolution. On this line we treat seed that has come in to us cleaned only or seed that we have cleaned previously and wasn’t treated originally, possibly due to orders not being in place at the time. This is currently our newest treater but none of the Evolutions are more than five years old anyway.

On all of treatment lines we are using the latest pump technology to apply with 99.9% accuracy every batch. Most pumps used are flow meters and despite constant calibration checks, very rarely need any adjustment. All of our weighing equipment is checked annually by weights and measures and is serviced by Chronos Richardson, who installed it originally.

We have huge flexibility for treating seed and are always prepared to switch what we are doing to get a more urgent job done sooner, even if this means more clean downs for us. We are offering you a service, it’s what you should expect.

We keep a treated sample of every single treatment batch we do, if required this can be sent off for analysis for loading and coverage, some samples are sent simply as random checks. We keep these samples for two years after application.

Immediately before seed treatment is when we take the official sample for certification, this sample is drawn automatically to ensure that each sample is made up of at least forty sub-samples. This is then sent to the licenced laboratory where the first check is for purity, seed cannot be despatched until a purity test has been passed. Germination takes a little longer, but all results are available for the customer in the form of a CERT 10, which is provided by the licencing authority.

As well as the official label applied to each bag of seed we barcode all our big bags and pallets of seed. The label is scanned and then when the fork truck driver puts the seed into store, he keys in the bay number where he has put it.

For further information, please contact Peter Fox or Ben Easthope.

Phone: 01733 221798 or Email: peter@daltonseeds.co.uk or ben@daltonseeds.co.uk