With a continuous aspiration to craft world-class Bordeaux styled wines here at De Toren, our winemaking team is constantly on the lookout for the next level or area of innovation, both in the cellar and the vineyard. Our philosophy is one of cultivating quality in every single thing that we do and our most recent purchase is therefore no exception to the rule. The viticultural team’s brand new Felco electro portable scissors, also known as the latest, most cutting edge pruning technology, arrived just in time!

Our team shares a bit more on how this tool will ultimately allow us to improve the effectiveness and most importantly the quality of work done in the De Toren vineyards…

Why the new electro portable pruning scissor rather than the traditional one?

Although the new electro portable pruning scissor serves the exact same core purpose as that of the traditional one, it is much more powerful, versatile, consistent and time efficient.

  • These new pruning scissors are ideal for heavy-duty work and enables fast-pruning actions in our De Toren vineyards.
  • It allows one to exponentially enhance effectiveness, and even more so, enables our vineyard team to cultivate consistency throughout all actions taking place during the pruning season.
  • Demanding a substantial smaller amount of ‘manpower’ for cleaner and more precise cutting, a specialised group of merely 4 ladies are now able to complete 1.6 hectares’ pruning in a working (8-hour) day, as supposed to the usual 10 ladies required for this same pruning action. This tool requires 20-man hours pruning per hectare compared to the industry norm of 80-man hours.

Most definitely enough motivation for our viticulture team to adopt this new pruning methodology!

How does the new electro portable scissor ease the pruning actions for our team?

The ergonomic nature of the new portable pruning scissor makes movements much easier for our core team of De Toren ladies, reducing the strain on their arm, hand and shoulder muscles. For example, these Felco scissors easily find its way around any branches by the mere activation of an electronic trigger, all the while preventing any compromises in the precision and quality of the cut.

With this automation, it allows for: the speed of the pruning action to be increased, the precision of the pruning actions to be improved, even clearer cutting with far more consistency, and last but not least, blisters and calluses are now something of the past for our ladies working in the vineyards.

Can the effectiveness of the new electro portable pruning scissor be monitored?

One of the big benefits of the new portable pruning scissor is the fact that our winemaking team can now track and manage the pruning action effectiveness, which wasn’t fully possible in the past. Each of the new pruning scissors has its own, unique monitoring meter built into it. This meter allows one to generate and capture crucial data, such as the number of cuts and hours completed per day, per person. This allows our winemaking team to better manage the effectiveness and to identify important focus areas.

In the end, it can be summarised as this innovative tool enables greater pruning effectiveness and precision to ensure even more consistent quality in our vineyards and ultimately our iconic wines.