John Deere CH960 two row sugar cane harvesters sell for nearly $2 million each

And, the team at RDO Equipment, Mackay, has just sold two of them to cane operations in Proserpine for $1.85 million each including GST.

RDO Equipment Mackay branch manager Lindsay Mawbey said the two CH960 factory-built machines were the only two of their kind operating in Australia.

"They have had goes at making two row harvesters in the past, but with not too much success so they've now come up with a commercially viable two row harvester," he said.

"This is designed to be a complete new harvesting system. A harvester on its own is only part of what the whole story is."

Mr Mawbey said the CH960 two row harvester would do about twice the amount of cane as a single rower.

"You can do the same amount in two thirds of the time...and you can get twice the wear life out of a machine as it's doing half the miles and half the hours for the same amount of cane as you would have cut with a single rower," he said.

"But where the big advantage comes is in the crop as the crop gets away a lot faster because you're harvesting slower and it (the 960) cuts the cane off a lot neater and doesn't pull the stool.

"It cuts it off clean so after two or three weeks the cane cut with a two row harvester is about two foot high whereas the cane cut with a single row harvester would only just be out of the ground.

"So you're getting about two to three weeks of extra growth in your cane for next season and the other part of it is that you've got half the ground compaction so your root system is a lot better developed so your overall cane stand will yield higher if you're using one of these machines."

Mr Mawbey said there had been a lot of interest in the CH960 machines, but were only suitable for specific customers.

He said they were really only suited to farmers, contractors or groups who were cutting 100,000 tonnes of cane a year.

"We're very happy to have sold two and we'll definitely sell more...but, as I say, it's a bit of a niche market," he said.

Mr Mawbey said as the machines weighed nearly 40 tonnes they needed a special truck and dolly to transport them, as well as an escort.

"So it's not a five-minute job to cart them around," he said.

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