For the latest information:
www.OliveHarvester.com

2008 Prototype Olive Harvester was the most successful to date. This olive harvester head unit was much more efficient with both speed and fruit removal. Very encouraging and a huge step forward from the earlier used prototypes.

As Tim is going overseas early June on a work visa for 2008 – 2009, R & D will be placed on hold.

For Tim’s next adventure, visit www.mongolmania.net This site is being constantly upgraded as the team prepare their car for over 12,000 grueling kms through countless countries from England to Mongolia.

Tim Gale, son of Bohena Olives Proprietors Jenny & Herb Gale, returned to Bohena Olives after 12 months working in the United States, to build a prototype olive harvester for the 2004 harvest. Harvesting began in May at Narrabri, followed by harvesting in Moree.

After picking approximately 65 tonnes of olives the revised harvester was entered into "The Land" (Inventors) competition at AgQuip in August 2004.

Tim was encouraged by many positive comments and has since taken further steps to build an improved prototype. This is being carried out presently at Bohena Olives, Narrabri, Northern NSW.

Olive harvester photo gallery

Tim Gale, Design Engineer and Olive Harvester Creator, shares his thoughts on the process of the Prototype 2004 Olive Harvester

Traditionally, to pick olives one would require two very important skills; the ability to climb into the canopy of a tree without a ladder or ropes and the dexterity to balance on a branch

while “beating” the olives off with a long stick.

One of the biggest expenses in olive production is picking the olive. This can be done in a number of ways, the traditional hand picking method referred to above, hand picking with the uses of mechanical assisted rakes or with a mechanical machine.

The only long term viable method is to use a machine. There are two basic types; trunk agitation and foliage agitation.

This project was the result of a several circumstances that made it a logical venture. I had had 7 years engineering experience working for BHP/Blue Scope Steel. I had itchy feet and wanted to try a project that my one year working on race cars in the USA hadn’t scratched. My father had already built a small prototype picking machine that had shown some promise and there was a real need in the local area for a picking solution.

2004 Harvester continued.
At the time to buy a machine for this purpose was
300 - 500 thousand dollars and a picking head without the machine was already 170 thousand dollars. This was just a little beyond my means and I also had a few fundamental issues with the configuration and designs that were available.

We started the design in January 2004 and a prototype head was built the next month. One of the biggest problems was that I had never actually seen olives picked - being away in the big smoke.

Armed with many different opinions, a little engineering and loads of enthusiasm I set forth.

There are not enough pages here to go into all of the “fun” we had, but there are quite a lot of things that can be accomplished in a 15 hour day, 7 day week work schedule. By May 2004 we had a prototype ready for the paddock for trialling and hopefully picking a lot of olives.

After a couple of months, we had trialled quite a variety of finger materials - fingers are the name given to our version of the stick for agitating the tree, and we had picked around 10,000 trees and 65 tonnes of olives.

We learnt quite a lot about getting olives off a tree!

Armed with our new knowledge and lots of new ideas, I started working on the next version. A number of prototype heads and many hours on a computer modelling the new harvester developed into a design that we are building at the moment for the 2005 harvest.