Titel-Trader 2.2009.indd - Agritechnica Trader

COMPANIES AND MARKETS
32 TRADER | 2 | 2009
Irrifrance
The rain maker from
Languedoc-Roussillon
At many sites throughout the world it is the water supply that constrains high-yield agriculture.
Irrifrance from the south of France offers both North German potato farmers and
North African wheat producers solutions for a safe harvest.
The sprinkler winds the 120
mm thick and 600 m long
black hose onto the drum
in leisurely fashion. The waterfi
lled PE hose alone weighs some
nine tonnes. To drive the strain
on the drum even higher, the
sprinkler cart has an additional
one tonne of concrete weights.
“This is the stress test for our
machines”, explains Jean-Pierre
Bousquet, Plant Manager and
Technical Director of the French
sprinkler irrigation specialist Irrifrance.
We are at the company‘s
test track in Paulhan in the
south of France. This area, some
40 minutes by car away from
Montpellier, is called Languedoc-Roussillon
– well known to
wine drinkers.
The grapes ripen on the approx.
20 km-wide strip between
the mountain chain of the Massif
Central and the Mediterranean.
Vineyards extend right up
to the twelve-hectare Irrifrance
company site. In former times
up to 800 staff worked here, but
changes in ownership and fi nancial
diffi culties led to drastic reductions
in numbers.
Since 2001 Irrifrance has
been owned by the entrepreneur
Dr. Pr. Osmane Aïdi, a leading
businessman operating chiefl y
in the hotel and oil business. As
a former Professor for Hydraulics
at the University of Damascus
in Syria, Dr. Pr. Aïdi continued
to devote himself to his
passion – water – and bought
the French market leader in the
fi eld of sprinkling machinery
and equipment, Irrifrance. The
company management was restructured
in spring this year. As
new Plant Manager and Technical
Director, Jean-Pierre Bousquet
sees his fi rst task to lie in
improving his company‘s distribution
structures and boosting
exports. The second step will be
to rationalise production. This is
to be achieved by standardising
components and applying greater
modular construction methods
in sprinkler technology.
Plant Manager and Technical director Jean-Pierre Bousquet (l.)
and Export Manager Mathieu Cailleau.
From the circular sprinkler
to the drum
Irrifrance sees itself as a fullrange
supplier in the fi eld of
sprinkling irrigation equipment
and machinery. The programme
includes a broad palette of drum
sprinklers.
It starts with Micro, the smallest
sprinkler that is used for instance
to quench the thirst of
the turf at football grounds, and
extends as far as Series 2000,
where the drum holds up to 750
m of PE hose with a diameter of
125 mm and the sprinkler range
covers a strip of 90 m.