History
The Ray Harrington Story.
The latest generation of the Harrington Seed Destructor is the culmination of 20 years of development and research, starting with an idea conceived by Western Australian farmer Ray Harrington.
Ray was driven by the knowledge that Australian farmers were fighting a war to eradicate weeds in their cash crops. Since the 1970s, the introduction of cheap, highly effective herbicides has been the farmer’s main defence against weed infestation, but over the course of time through natural selection, herbicide resistant strains of weeds have become a critical issue in many areas of Australia across all staple crop varieties.
Ray’s idea was brilliantly simple: what if there was a way to reliably destroy weed seeds mechanically during the harvest process?
After trying cooking, catching, cremating, he settled on crushing, or a variation thereon and adapted the cage mill taken from the mining industry to reduce coal to powder. HSD technology was born.
The chaff stream from a combine harvester is intercepted and fed directly into a high speed mill that pulverises the chaff, which includes weed seeds that would otherwise pass through the harvester and be returned to the field. The Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) understood the importance of Ray Harrington’s endeavour and commitment to design a machine capable of destroying weed seeds prevalent in the waste from the harvesting process. GRDC provided funding and UniSA provided research and development expertise to further develop HSD technology.
The first tow-behind HSD units were developed commercially by de Bruin Engineering and won the prestigious Edison Award for Smart Agriculture but the tow behind unit was quickly overshadowed by the promise of HSD technology integrated right onto the harvester. Finally, after years of research and development by UniSA funded by GRDC, through many trials by and tribulations HSD technology entered its ultimate phase – the Integrated Harrington Seed Destructor – iHSD V12.
De Bruin Engineering.
De Bruin Engineering is located in Mount Gambier, South Australia and was awarded the exclusive licence to commercialise and manufacture the integrated Harrington Seed Destructor - iHSD in 2016. Since that time de Bruin Engineering has developed the product further into a world leading Harvest Weed Seed Control with not only domestic sales but also international sales. The manufacturing of the iHSD is guided by Quality Management Standards and processes.
By integrating industrial components, systems proven in the field, and by addressing issues of everyday farm use, de Bruin Engineering has delivered a robust Harvest Weed Seed Control solution to Australian Farmers.
De Bruin Engineering is a family owned business who employs highly qualified and motivated staff who are consistently striving to continuously improve their processes and products high quality.