Fendt's Beautiful Beast Wins Big

By winning a platinum award in the world’s biggest international design competition, the Fendt IDEAL combine harvester has proved that it’s both beautiful and brawny. Denene Erasmus reports.

- Denene Erasmus

More than any of its other notable attributes, it was the attractive design of the Fendt IDEAL combine harvester that made this machine stand out from the other candidates from 106 countries, persuading the international panel of experts to award it a platinum prize in the A’Design Award competition’s category for agriculture, horticulture and fisheries. The award was presented at a gala evening at the Teatro Sociale in Como, Italy, recently.

According to a statement released by Fendt and its parent company, AGCO, the combine harvester had been designed entirely from scratch.

“With the Fendt IDEAL, the challenge was to work with a global, intercontinental team to meet the needs of different customers and harvesting conditions.

“The threshing mechanism and cleaning system came from the Danish firm Randers, the TrackRide from Jackson, US, and all the electronics were developed in Marktoberdorf, Bavaria [in Germany],” said the statement.