A couple of monster Dewulf harvesters dwarfed most of the other veg kit littered across the Niagri Engineering stand, but there was plenty to see for those showgoers that looked beyond the biggest machines.

One of the less grand items was a new Pandora box filler, which is built by French company Downs Machinery and imported to the UK by the Norfolk-based veg-and-root specialist.

More news from Lamma 2014

The potato and onion box filler can be used with more than 100 types of crate that can vary in size from 1.4-2.5m, says the company. It can shift up to 50t of crop an hour and uses two independent arms to fill the boxes. It also has automatic raise/lower and fall protection fitted to each arm as standard.

Touchscreen control is a modern-day must-have and should make the box filler easier to control, too.