The year of 2020 was a year of challenges for BEDNAR FMT. For me, it was mostly about managing business in an environment impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic. The drought in spring also made the situation worse. It was a continuation of an unusually long dry period in many areas of Europe.

The first COVID wave had a big impact on my travels around the world. When the restrictions were eased for the first time I took advantage of my presence in the Czech Republic and started visiting Czech and Slovak farmers regularly. While most of the nation dealt with COVID, farmers dealt with the drought and a very bad emergence of crops. Fortunately, it started to rain in May and the majority of the crops managed to get to the stage that brought at least an average yield. That applied, more or less, across all of Europe.

BEDNAR in 2020

Thanks to the high level of pre-orders for spring 2020, our production capacity in our original production plants was used to the maximum until April. During the spring slump caused by COVID, we opened a modern production line in a newly built two-storey hall which turned out to be convenient, even though unintentional timing. The start of the new technology was not completely trouble-free. Some of the difficulties were related to the restriction of movement of supplier companies and the quarantine measures.

Increase in sales

As soon as the crops “recovered”, we started receiving a large number of orders, especially from France, England and Ukraine. Our production capacity was filled until the end of our fiscal year. This development led to a year-on-year increase in sales of about 13.5%, arising from the production of mounted machines and spare parts. The total sales of the company grew by about 4.6%, because of the lower sales in post-harvest technologies where most of the large projects were moved to 2021.

Development of new machines and the main novelty

In the area of development, we mostly focused on “tuning” our current products in 2020, to increase the utility value for our customers. Our greatest novelty, introduced in 2020, is the wide Efecta CE 12000 seed drill, with a working width of 12 m. We had worked on this machine for more than four years and it has the potential to become a very important pillar of our seeding technology portfolio. Prior to its introduction on the market, we had applied a lot of new approaches in the entire process of development and testing, and we reflected the comments of many leading agricultural businesses from different countries.

2021 outlook

While most industries are facing stagnation or a fall in consumer demand, the importance of agriculture continues to grow and the whole industry remains stable. BEDNAR has managed to increase the number of pre-season orders for the following season of 2021 by about 27%, when compared with the same date last year. Unlike in previous years, this increase did not occur mostly due to new machine models, but due to the expansion and better quality of the dealer networks. And I am very pleased with such development. We have managed to conclude new dealer contracts with premium dealers in many countries. It is a result of our long-term cooperation in the development of new technical and modern agronomic designs. Together with modern production facilities, it is also a good starting position for further growth and a potential to improve services for even more customers.

GALLERY / MEDIA