Inventions that now have great 
significance always start small. In 1967 Georg Mayer developed the first ‘potting machine’, the first automatic potting machine with a drilling system. This year, the Heidenheim-based company celebrates the 52nd anniversary of this technology. It didn’t end at the German market – Mayer’s potting machines are being sent all over the world, from Dubai to Shanghai. Last month, they supplied their machines to the new facility of Ball Zhuomei. According to Lun Li, area sales manager at Mayer, the Chinese market offers many opportunities.
Manuel Linke and Lun Li presenting the potfiller TM 1010F at IPM Shanghai 2019
“At IPM Shanghai in March we had not only a lot of people visiting our booth, most of them came to ask more details of the machine. In China it is hard to find good workers. Young people are flocking to the big cities and the people that do start working in the greenhouses, are quite often leaving within a few months, while training them takes four to five months. Add to that the demand for high quality plants and all this results in a great demand for automation, to get a much quicker and more uniform production.”
The potting machine not only does the job of one worker very quickly, it replaces several employees, as can be seen in the video below, which was made at Janßen Gartenbau in Germany. “Three machines working together process 10,000 pots per hour.”
Just as with Janßen Gartenbau in Germany, Mayer supplied a series of machines to Ball China. “It is one of the reasons Ball chose us as a supplier. By supplying the entire line, and not just a machine that fits into a line with several other machines, we can offer the best service.
All in all, China is a promising market, but also a challenging one. “In Europe, when you start producing flowers, you just buy a potting machine. In China that is not the case. Only the big companies can simply buy one, lots of other, smaller companies are less able to do so. The language barrier is the biggest issue. You have to speak English to import a machine. Therefore, we decided to open an office in Nanjing which we share with several horticulture suppliers from Europe. This opened the market of the smaller Chinese flower companies to us.”
For more information:
Mayer
Poststraße 30
89522 Heidenheim
Germany
T: +49 7321 9594 290
F: +49 7321 9594 299
info@mayer.de
mayer.de