On June 23, when walking into the Zhengyang County Advanced Manufacturing Development Zone, welding flowers were splashing and machines roared in the production workshop of an agricultural machinery enterprise.
Workers are conducting trial production verification on the intelligent assembly line that has just been installed and debugged. They are carrying out component welding, complete machine assembly, and equipment joint debugging operations in an orderly manner. The first batch of peanut planters, harvesters, fruit pickers, seed shellers and other products have entered the small batch trial production stage.
This marks that the peanut intelligent agricultural machinery equipment project with an annual output of 50,000 yuan, with a total investment of 300 million yuan, has officially entered trial production, adding strong momentum to the industrial upgrading of the “Peanut Capital of China”.
Deeply cultivate the peanut industry and solve the bottleneck of mechanization throughout the entire process
Zhengyang County has a year-round peanut planting area of 1.6 million acres and a total output of more than 500,000 tons. It has been the country’s largest peanut producer for 28 consecutive years and is also a demonstration county for the full mechanization of major crop production in the country.
Relying on more than 1.6 million acres of high-quality peanut planting area, Zhengyang has gathered more than 30 peanut machinery manufacturing companies and built three standardized machinery manufacturing industrial parks, providing a broad testing ground and market space for the agricultural machinery equipment industry.
Taking root in this fertile industrial ground, local agricultural machinery companies have taken it as their own responsibility to build China’s peanut full-process mechanization industry brand.
The Intelligent Agricultural Machinery Equipment Research Institute, Huanghuai University and other scientific research institutes have in-depth cooperation to carry out research on technical blockages and stuck points in the key links of peanut cultivation, planting, management, harvesting, drying and mechanization, focusing on breakthroughs in core technologies such as high-performance peanut sowing and low-loss and efficient harvesting.
At present, relevant companies have reached strategic cooperation with a number of scientific research institutes and strive to become an industry brand in the field of high-yield peanut sowing models in China within three years.
Intelligent manufacturing empowers, trial production achieves “acceleration”
From the start of construction to trial production, the project only took 5 months, demonstrating an efficient construction speed.
The project has a total investment of 300 million yuan, covers an area of 102.6 acres, has a total construction area of 46,600 square meters, and has a standardized production workshop, R&D center and supporting service facilities.
Currently, 130 sets of high-precision manufacturing equipment in the production workshop – including laser cutting, CNC bending, CNC lathes, robot welding, etc. – have all been installed and have entered the joint debugging and testing stage.
Six electrophoresis, electrostatic spraying, and complete machine assembly lines were simultaneously launched for trial operation. From plate blanking, precision molding, machining, automatic welding, to anti-corrosion coating, and finished product assembly, the entire process has been implemented to achieve internal integrated closed-loop production.
The project plans to build a 40,000-square-meter standardized factory building, covering an integrated exhibition hall of “production, learning, research, application, and promotion”, a R&D center, a pilot workshop, a production workshop, an assembly workshop, an agricultural machinery scrapping and dismantling workshop, etc., and a 3,000-square-meter office building.
During the trial production period, the company will focus on verifying the stability of the production line, optimizing process parameters, and improving the quality control system to lay a solid foundation for subsequent full-scale mass production.
With complete equipment and mature technology, the project will have the mass production capacity to produce 60,000 sets of agricultural machinery and equipment annually after reaching full production. It is expected to achieve annual sales revenue of 300 million yuan and create 300 local jobs.
Full-chain services to help rural revitalization and agricultural modernization
Relevant enterprises adhere to the development concept of “technology empowers agriculture, and ingenuity creates quality”, focusing on key links such as sowing, harvesting, drying, and seed shelling, and providing full-chain services of high-quality tillage, high-performance sowing, and low-loss and efficient harvesting.
After the project is officially put into operation, it will provide full industry chain services before, during, and after production around agricultural production, promote full-scale agricultural machinery operation services from tillage, planting, prevention, and harvesting on a village basis, and effectively introduce advanced technologies, equipment, and varieties to small farmers.
Through centralized procurement, centralized services, unified sales, etc., it can save costs and increase efficiency for farmers and increase the income of the village collective economy.
According to estimates, through new technologies and new equipment, peanut yield per mu can be increased by 10% and income per mu can be increased by 200 yuan.
The company is committed to promoting the transformation of agricultural production from a household-by-household fragmented production method to a large-scale and intensive production method, maximizing farmers’ income through the “guaranteed + secondary dividend” model, and promoting the development of agricultural products in the direction of high-quality, green, and branded products.
From a peanut to a piece of equipment, from a field to a cluster.
The local agricultural machinery industry is guided by technological innovation, supported by intelligent manufacturing, and linked by full-chain services. Taking the trial production of this project as a new starting point, it is accelerating the injection of surging momentum into the high-quality development of the Zhengyang peanut industry and rural revitalization, and continues to consolidate the industrial foundation of “the world’s peanuts look to China, and Chinese peanuts look to Zhengyang”.
