For STEYR, the key is to manage farming

LECTURA has attended the STEYR Field Days 2019 event in Sankt Valentin, Austria and conducted an interview with Christian Huber, Vice President Global Product Management of CASE IH and STEYR tractors. If you are interested in the event itself, catch a glimpse of our photoreport.

What can the visitors explore and examine at St. Valentin plant?

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We are at the headquarters of Case IH and STEYR. Important for us is really what the guys are experiencing here. I hope that you can feel the patience here. We have excited people, who are proud to work here, and we try to transfer that to our customers. It is not just a visit that is why we call this the Experience Center...experience this nice motion here. So, we have this Experience Centre, where you walk in and I hope you feel a friendly atmosphere. It is bright, nice and big and you have all the machines there.

We won several awards already, where we have been the most efficient plant here, in Austria. We benchmarked with companies like BMW or General Motors and we won against them. At the end of the day, we have around 13,000 visitors a year, who are coming to the plant to see our emotions, because a lot of people who work here are part-time farmers themselves. So, we offer the Experience Center to transfer our patience to our customers.

What are the advantages of Precision Farming by Steyr?

We got a lot of news there. We got the S-Tech story, where you got the S-Tech monitor with Auto-Guidance available, where you can go with RTK [Real-time kinematics] for 1.5 cm exact accuracy. What is a really nice feature, you can combine it now with the S-Turn II, which means that at the headland you can really turn fully automated, including all the sequence from lifting the plant, stopping the PTO, lowering the engine rate, lifting up the implement, reducing the speed. In summary, it is the combination of Auto-Guidance and headland management.

What would the company like to achieve in the following year?

As STEYR, we would like to grow, and we want to bring innovative features to our customers to become more professional in the premium segment. We want to be the first choice for this customer’s segment and providing nice intelligent features in this a bit more premium approach is what we will do to generate the increasing business. We would also like to be presented in more countries and different areas, because otherwise you cannot grow.

How do you visualize the future of farming and agriculture?

It is exciting, I am more than 40 years in the business, and I have never experienced such an exciting time like it is today. What we have now and what is in front of us is really revolutionary and my opinion is “Big data”, so all the electronics what we have today will make that happen.

We have apps telling us the status of our fleet. We start a new approach of managing farming and I think that this is the future. The tools are our machines, but the key, where the future is going, is farm management.

Steyr has recently arranged a charity event called “Reiten gegen den Hunger” together with Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Help) organization. How successful was the project? Do you plan any similar events?

We support charities in general, because we feel happy that we were born in a place and world where we are all happy. If we were born in Uganda or Ethiopia, for example, it would be a different situation. So, we try to support similar events and this charity was successful. We supported it with €5,000 and our tractors. It was a nice opportunity to show the Expert tractor for the first time and, in this case, it is a good event which we will try to repeat.

What can your visitors expect at Agritechnica 2019 trade fair in November?

We will present the STEYR range with the new STEYR Expert CTV that is going to be the flagship, of course, and the newest evolution. But surely, we will have other small features which will be introduced and announced at a later point in time. 

What is your favourite Steyr model and why?

I love all of them. It is hard to say, but I have a special personal favourite, because of my journey in this company over a long period of time. Before I have worked in the marketing area I always asked for a mid-size/smaller size tractor that is compact, having the dimensions to be flexible also in the mountain areas, having a low centre of gravity, good all around performance for all applications and automatization and I have been asked to join the product development, which I was responsible for 3 years.

Therefore, I more or less designed the STEYR MULTI tractor range, having all the experience and emotions from working on the field, test-driving for a couple of years and being together with all the farmers, understanding what their needs are…it is the one that I was excited to develop and bring into the market. The MULTI tractor is a little bit my favourite, little bit above the others.

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Company overview

STEYR Traktoren is an Austrian manufacturer of agricultural tractors based in Sankt Valentin, Austria. Although the company was previously a part of conglomerate Steyr-Daimler-Puch (1936-1990), its first historical milestone dates back to 1947, when the company presented the first tractor model – STEYR 180. In 1996, STEYR was taken over by Case Corporation, three years later merged to CNH Global. Since 2012, the company is a part of CNH Industrial agricultural brand family together with Case IH and New Holland. STEYR is known for its tailor-made farming solutions, which combine modern technologies, power and efficiency.