Under wraps

Baled silage has revolutionised fodder preservation in Ireland since its introduction in the early 1980s. Since then, silage-bale technology has improved incrementally, delivering better preservation, greater ease of handling, faster baling, and improved cost efficiencies over time.
Lloyd Dawson began his career over 30 years ago with Irish Ropes, manufacturers of the iconic Red Setter baler twine, well known to an older generation of farmers. Lloyd explains his career progression: “I started with the Irish Ropes group, and they were subsequently bought by British Polythene Industries (BPI), who were the owners of the Silotite and Visqueen ranges of silage wraps, silage and silage sheetings products. At this stage I’m now sales director for Silotite, overseeing the Irish and UK markets as well as large part of the Southern Hemisphere including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, China, Japan, India and Pakistan.”

Improved bale quality

Lloyd has witnessed significant change over the course of his career: “The technology around bale wrapping has changed immeasurably, even in the last decade. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the Silotite brand and in those four decades we’ve seen huge changes, not just in the technology of manufacturing the film, but also in the bales themselves.
“The bale weights have doubled. We went from twine to net, and now we’re moving away from net to the film system. And with that has come investment in the technology required to make better films. The film is longer, stronger, but lighter than the previous generation, making it more efficient. The system in use today for wrapping bales reduces wastage and increases output, and if you take a winter like we’ve had this year, that’s very important.

“Bale uniformity has made bales much more dependable. The biggest surface of a bale is around the barrel. That’s two thirds of the bale’s surface. The way bales were wrapped in the past, most of the film was on the ends of the bale, and the least amount around the barrel, where the biggest surface is. And, if you go five centimetres into that bale, that represents 37 per cent of the entire contents. The development of the filament film has given extra protection because you’re cross-wrapping in a different direction. The result is that the bale has much more strength in how it’s being protected,” he says.
All of this contributes to the preservation of the bale for longer because the structure is better, they are more durable, and hold their density. Lloyd continues: “In turn, they open more easily for feed out and, with the netting gone, the fodder doesn’t become enmeshed inside the netting, and it can all be recycled in one place.”

Baled over pit

Commenting on the advantages of baled silage over pit silage, Lloyd says: “If we take a clamp, the average wastage can be up to 25 per cent. The average wastage in a bale has been about five per cent and with the film system we’re seeing that percentage drop below two per cent. Trials have shown that’s given farmers an extra five euros of feed value per bale.
“Most farms have a silage pit or clamp and they want to reduce wastage. There are products in the market that achieve that goal. Cling seal or a vacuum sheet, which sits directly on top of the clamp, is an example. The farmer puts the standard silage sheet on top and that creates a vacuum with the cling film sucked down onto the surface, reducing wastage on the top and shoulders of the clamp.”

Rapid mechanical progress

Bale technology has been matched with improvements in baler machinery technologies. Lloyd explains the progress: “The original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have rapidly developed novel technologies. Three or four years ago, there was a choice of one or two machines. Today, every major OEM in the marketplace has a baler available that can apply the latest film products. Farmers can see the benefits, including silage quality, ease of use and lower wastage. There are efficiency and environmental gains. The amount of film applied to the bale is reducing its environmental footprint. Now, we’re looking at bringing films into the market that will have recycled content in them so we’re not relying entirely on virgin materials from the oil industry. Close to 90 per cent of film used by Irish farmers is being recycled and, since 2022, the cost has gone up by 80 per cent, from 14c a bale to 25c per bale. We’re reducing the amount of film applied to the bale, bringing that cost down by 10 per cent. There are other developments to reduce costs, including transport costs and combination machines. A contractor wants to spend as much time as possible on the tractor baling. If we increase the length of the roll by removing the box and use sleeve packaging which is 10 times lighter, you’ve 20 per cent more length, reducing transport and packaging costs. That sleeve can be recycled with the bale. Everything can be recycled in one place, and we’re being encouraged by European legislation to reduce the amount of single use package. The world has signed up to become carbon neutral. We’re ahead of the game, and farmers are joining in on that and getting the benefits from it.”

The complete nutrition bale

In Ireland, we associate bale wraps predominantly with grass silage. That’s not the case everywhere, Lloyd says: “There’s any number of forages that can be wrapped. In China and South Africa, for instance, they are using compactor balers rather than field balers. They are stationary and the crops are harvested and brought to the balers. Many crops are grown under irrigation. They’re using total mixed rations (TMR), mixing more than one crop with bales weighing up to 1.3 tonnes and annual throughputs of up to 200,000 bales. The bales are then transported to feed lots. Everything is in the bale, manufactured specifically to farmers requirements, a total food package, if you like. You’ve got maize, alfalfa, sugar beet, proteins and minerals all mixed. Each bale has an identification code with the data stored in the Cloud, so the farmers know exactly what they are purchasing.”

What are the next big concepts?

Sustainability is our big step forward. We don’t invest in machines that have a slow output. We want machines that allow us to make our products more sustainable. That means we must be able to incorporate recycled content. It means we must be able to produce thinner and stronger films. That’s the technology that we’re going towards and that’s going to reduce the volumes to be collected, with the farmer getting higher quality silage.
“You have a choice how you go forward in terms of film manufacture. A mix of fossil, a mix of organic, mechanically recycled, a mix of chemically recycled and you can have a mix of renewable polymers grown from starch. It’ll be a mix of all of that. We aim to decouple ourselves from the fossil side of it, increase the recycled content, but we must make sure we keep the quality and performance of the product.”