Kostas Houliaras

Hi Folks,

on our way down to South-Greece, while passing the town Mesologgi, I regocnized a yard of an agricultural dealer, which was parked full of new tilling equiment. So we stopped by and figured out, that this was the plant of "Kostas Houaliars", one of the main manufacturer for tilling and leveling equipment here in Greece.

Right after entering the yard the owner and his son - both are named Kostas - welcomed us very well...

They allowed us to have a closer look around at their machines and take pictures, as well!

This big pull-type discs take (took) a major part in their business, Kostas told us...

The largest diameter of these discs is about 1 meter, which sounds very big, but makes sense because of the very dry soil over here...

This convertible disc has 3,8 m width, requires around 200 hp and reminded my a little to a Kuhn rotary rake, because of its frame and mainly the colour... ;-)


And every machine is equipped with a hydraulic chassis.

Also machines from  different ages, we've found.... :-)

Affected by the "crises" here in Greece, they don't sell anymore machines, so their yard is that full, that I couldn't make proper pictures of the whole machines. Kostas said they had to lay off 7 out of 8 from their former employees!! So here you can see the lucky dude, who does still have a job... ;-)

In 2010/11 they produced around 10 machines each week! In July this year they received just one single order. The one grader, that was in the workshop that moment...

I asked him about a forcast what they think and he was just very sad, that it will take ages till the economy in Greece will get up, again!

Their 2nd biggest market is full automaticly equipped Laser Graders with working widths between 2,7 m till 6 m and reuirements of 300 hp!! This particular one had max. 4,5 m.

 

They are allowed to get driven along the road, because they are smaller than 3 meter....

and then in the field extend to their whole working width, with the hydraulic cyclinders, you can see behind the main shield and at the rear axle, which is changing in the same amount.

Pretty smart engineering!!!

The cylinder in the middle is for the main work tilting the shield back and forward and the one on the left side above the "boogie" makes the machine manoverable around it's main axle... 

As you can see this is also a 4,5 m grader in its road mode.

And all those functions are controlled by the Laser and computer on top of the machine, which communicates with the controll station, the farmer has to put up beside the field, which is constantly sending the working datas, according to hight and distance!

What I really liked, was that they laser their companies name in an aditional sheet on every machines, what looks preety neat.

It looked like, that they are really building very strong machines.... ? ;-)

All in all very friendly people, who took themself some time to spend with us, although we just showed up there without any appointment or warning.... !? :-)

We got some prospects to take away and here is the website of the company, which is part of the Euro-Tiger - group ...

To be continued....  :-)