Mick English, owner of civil engineering company Shannon Valley Group, has taken delivery of a 552hp Fendt 1052 that he describes as Ireland’s first. The Dublin-based dealer Farmworks Machinery said the 14t machine is the largest Fendt in the country.
The tractor is powered by a 12.4-litre, six-cylinder MAN engine producing 2,650Nm of torque. English said the power output was a major reason for moving to the new model after first seeing it at Agritechnica. His company had bought a Fendt 1050 three years earlier and has put 4,000 to 5,000 hours on it. He said the company was happy with that machine and decided to order the newer version.
English linked the purchase to a longer relationship with the brand, saying Shannon Valley has run Fendts for seven or eight years. He also said the decision was reinforced by advice from manufacturers of the equipment the tractors operate with. In his account, those suppliers carry out their own research and consistently recommend Fendt; he described the brand as the Rolls-Royce of tractors.
Heavy attachments and real work
The 1052 will not be a light-duty machine. It is to carry a 3.5t weight on the front and a 9t hybrid stone-crushing and soil-stabilisation unit on the rear. English rejected the idea that very large tractors are merely for show. He said the tractor reaches its limit when working in the ground to mill limestone boulders and hard clays, and that the whole machine is pulled down in those conditions. In his view, more power makes the work easier on the tractor.
English, who comes from Co Leitrim, has 35 years of earthmoving experience. He said he was involved with tractors from a young age, following a family business that began with Massey Ferguson equipment. His father started in 1976 with a Massey 35 and later a Massey 165, machines that lacked the comfort of a cab. English recalled that the 165 was a mark one model with round axles and a small Perkins 203 engine. He also remembered climbing onto the tractor as a three-year-old when it arrived in the yard and jumping off again in tears when the throttle was opened. The family still has those tractors, he said.
He suggested that, in 1970s Co Leitrim, a Massey 165 occupied a position comparable to that of a Fendt 1052 today. The family’s approach to machinery has also involved early adoption; English said his father was among the first in Ireland to have JCB machines. He said his father started the business in London in 1966, buying new JCB 3C diggers, and moved it back to Leitrim in 1970 with the JCBs and other equipment. Shannon Valley now runs more than 200 diggers, including a 75t Hitachi Zaxis 690-7 bought in 2020. At the time, it was the first of its kind sold in Europe.
English said he will probably buy another Fendt 1052 next year. For now, the new tractor is set to join a fleet where high power is treated as a working requirement rather than a display feature.