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New system revolutionizes fertilizer sales
Northern Steel has developed the Accu Blend automated fertilizer card-lock system which, like a fuel card-lock system, will give farmers the convenience of buying liquid fertilizer blends at any time using a personalized card with a magnetic strip. The system is the brainchild of Bill Robb, sales manager at Northern Steel. He had been a fertilizer dealer for many years before coming to work at Northern Steel, and Robb remembered what it was like to manually blend fertilizers for customers. “Sitting on the hot side of a sunny tank in the spring blending fertilizer is about as exciting as watching cement dry,” he said. “It’s not a very desirable job.” Robb noticed the fuel industry had changed with ready acceptance of card and key lock facilities, and he saw potential to apply the same technology to fertilizer sales. He took his idea to Doug Snider, purchaser at Northern Steel, and together, with the enthusiastic support of the company’s CEO Paul Roy and general manager Darcy Simoneau, they developed the Accu Blend system.
To use the system, customers must have previously visited dealers to supply them with soil tests or fertilizer requests. Based on the samples or requests, dealers enter customer data, specified to land location and number of acres, into a special computer program developed by Northern Steel. This process can be done at any time during the year. Customers are then given a personalized card that they can use 24 hours a day, seven days a week to access the fertilizer blending system. At the time of pickup, customers swipe their card in the card reader and, after entering a PIN number, enter a predetermined field number. The system will then request the volume wanted. Once these entries have been made, customers position the load arm into their tank, push a dead-man switch, and the system proceeds to dispense the proper blend specified and the requested volume. The loading sequence is programmed to load the product with the least volume first, and then continues to load products of higher volume until all the products have been pumped to complete the requested blend. On completion of loading, a customer receipt is printed which lists the field number, volume of each product, final analysis of the blend and the total volume dispensed. At a later time, the dealer can download this information from the system to complete invoicing. “What we’ve done is make this thing accessible so anybody who’s been pre-authorized can use it,” Snider said. Current liquid fertilizer sales systems have required someone on site at the time of pickup to open and close valves and calculate the needed blend. The Accu Blend system eliminates the need for a person at the liquid blending tanks, freeing up employees to work with customers in other ways. “The main advantages are customer satisfaction, time management and, as a fertilizer dealer, better use of your help in terms of meeting your customers’ needs,” Robb said. Northern Steel has manufactured on prototype of the system, and began marketing it last week. It is the first system of its kind in North America, according to Robb. “I don’t know that we’re going to revolutionize the world, but it will change the way fertilizer is sold,” he said. |
The
world of fertilizer sales is entering a new era, thanks to an invention
by a Tisdale company that’s about to hit the market.
The
system consists of a card reader, controller, pump, mass-flow meter, solenoid
valves and a loading rack with a loading arm. The system is skid-mounted
and is pre-assembled with all the wiring and necessary valves. Stairs and
a building to house the equipment are also included.