Kesla sold its first harvester head to Japan in 2005. At the present, 2015, after ten years and over 10,000 hours of hard work the head is still the owner’s favorite tool in forest.
The harvester head was acquired in 2005 by Mizukami Forest, company owned by father and son Hiroji and Kenshiro Mizukami. The company is operating in the mountains of Kumamoto prefecture, on the Kyushu island in southern Japan. Hiroji Mizukami has been logger for forty years and the company was established by his father. In other words, the son Mizukami is now entrepreneur in the third generation.
- - The fourth generation is already growing, so it seems that the company has future, Mizukamis tell smiling.
Mizukami Forest has five employees and in addition to the logging, they do a lot of other forestry work mainly with excavators. That is also why the stroke harvester was a natural and wise choice at the time.
- - Our PATU 410SH harvester head has worked more than 10 000 hours without any major problems, the Mizukamis state proudly.
The head has not needed any mending, not even tiny welding and you can see it has been taken very good care of. The simple structure and serviceability of the head get special thanks from Kenshiro Mizukami.
- - In the beginning the work sites were mainly hinoki (Japanese Cypress) thinning, where the features of KESLA stroke harvesters were really unbeatable. Hinoki timber is very valuable but it has very tough branches that can’t be delimbed by roller feed or track feed heads without damaging the valuable timber surface. But stroke feed harvester head makes it without any problem.
Nowadays the amount of spruce in Mizukami’s cuttings has grown noticeably. The KESLA stroke harvester has shown its superb capacity also with spruce forest.
- - Although stroke feed looks rather slow, the productivity actually increases in comparison with the old track feed. The delimbing feed is strong without need to reverse even for the thickest branches. The delimbing quality is excellent and there is no trace of feeding rollers or tracks on the valuable wood surface. Power requirement is relatively low, so we manage well with a 7.5 tons excavator. To get the same production with a roller or track feed head, we would need at least to double the size of the excavator. We prefer a small excavator also because of lower acquisition and maintenance costs. When the maintenance and repair costs of the harvester head are almost nonexisting, is the cost-efficiency perfect from the entrepreneurs point of view, praises Kenshiro Mizukami with satisfaction.
In the photo Hiroji and Kenshiro Mizukami, the owners of the Mizukami Forest.