Gem sprayers are set to return to the UK market, though in a somewhat different form.

The UK-made machines were very popular with UK farmers (and are still in widespread use), so much so that the firm was bought by Case IH in 1997. Case sold them for a while through its dealer network but stopped production several years ago.

Now a new firm called FarmGEM has emerged. It is led by Mike Would, the founder of Gem Sprayers, Brian Knight, managing director of Knight Farm Machinery and Terry Fixter, former production director of GEM Sprayers.

The company, based at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, plans to promote and sell a range of trailed and mounted sprayers from 200 litres + 2m booms up to 4000 litres capacity with boom widths up to 28m.

The machines will be manufactured in Hungary by Farmgep, the country’s leading sprayer manufacturer.

“The design knowledge and experience that Brian Knight and myself, together with Farmgep’s manufacturing capability, combine to make what we believe will be a winning formula for success for FarmGEM to supply a good product range at the right price,” said director Mike Would.

“There is a growing demand for quality, competitively priced sprayers of these capacities in the UK and in Europe and we are well advanced in setting up dealer networks to handle sales. “The response by dealers keen to market and sell FarmGEM sprayers has been excellent and we feel very confident that we have a range to meet what we see as pent-up demand,” said managing director Terry Fixter.

“The investment in FarmGEM and with Farmgep provides an opportunity to become involved in markets and products not covered by Knight Farm Machinery and to supply self propelled sprayers into Hungary through reciprocal arrangements with Farmgep,” said director, Brian Knight.

FarmGem will be launching its first machine at LAMMA in January.