São Paulo – Enalta Inovações Tecnológicas, an agricultural automation company headquartered in the interior of São Paulo, has products in operation in Sudan. The company makes equipment for control of sugarcane cutting that is exported to the Arab country for use in Case IH cutters. The multinational, a maker of agricultural machinery, has operations in Brazil and exports its harvesters to Sudan. Production is between 30 and 50 machines a year.
According to the president at Enalta, Cléber Manzoni, the equipment used in the Case IH machines is the Auto Tracker. It includes sensors close to the harvester blades and equipment in the cabin showing when the cutter is hitting the soil and no longer just the cane. On sugarcane cutters, precision is required in this operation, so that the machine may cut cane as close to the ground as possible, without touching the earth.
The harvester itself cuts the cane and transfers it to a transport vehicle. The work of separating the earth from the cane, when both are mixed, is expensive for mills, as it requires more water. Lorries also end up carrying heavier loads, due to the earth transported. According to Manzoni, when there is no control in the equipment, the work is exclusively in the hands of the harvester’s operator, which may generate failures.
Apart from Auto Tracker, Enalta produces equipment for automation with different operations, like control of machinery performance – it informs the manager how long the machine was out of operation, either due to shift changes or other reasons – as well as engine oil temperature. These products may be used in agricultural machinery for any crop, according to Manzoni.
Enalta was established in 1999 in the city of Catanduva. At the time, Manzoni, an electric engineer, and another partner opened the company and bought technology for production of sprayer monitoring from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). Later, in 2001, Enalta got funds from the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) to develop their own technology and moved to the city of São Carlos, where there is a sector hub and where the company was incubated up to 2003.
Currently, Enalta is still in São Carlos. The other partner left the business in 2005 and today, apart from Manzoni, the company also belongs to Criatec, a fund under the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The company produces over 4.000 items a year and employs 58 people. The equipment is sold both for the machinery industry and for agro-industrial producers. Apart from the Brazilian market and Sudan, Enalta also exports to Central America, mainly Colombia.
Contact
Enalta Inovações Tecnológicas
Telephone: (+55 16) 3411-6060
Site: www.enalta.com.br
*Translated by Mark Ament
