Remember the Farrell Trayler Drier? It was an ingenious system that used a standard-looking farm trailer as the basis of an all-in-one mobile grain drier and stirrer.

It was on sale between 1986 and 2001 and some 175 units were sold. Then the rights were bought by Danish engineer Svend Lassen who started making it in Denmark. However UK sales slowed to a trickle.

Now it’s back, appearing at yesterday’s UKgrain event in new colours and with Colchester, Essex firm Tey Farm Systems the official importer. And its sheer portability could give some of the more conventional mobile drier designs a run for their money.

It’s now called the Turbodan and there are three models, with capacities of 15t, 18t and 25t respectively. It may look like a conventional grain trailer at the back, but there’s some kit at the front you wouldn’t normally expect to see out the back window of your tractor.

First off, there’s a 700kW (1000kW in the 25t model) diesel powered burner supplied with fuel from an 800 litre (1300 litres on the 25t model) tank.

Under that is a horizontally mounted fan with air flow ranging from 22,000cu m/hr on the smallest model to 35,000cu m/hr on the biggest one. The heated air is piped through a perforated drying floor at the bottom of the trailer  

Meanwhile a 12kW (20kW on the 25t version) pto-powered generator powers three grain stirrers (4 on the 25t model) that move diagonally across the grain. That, says Mr Lassen, plus a healthy air-flow means that drying is pretty speedy.

Each model will dry a full load of wheat by 4-5% in about an hour, he says. Cooling then takes 20-30 minutes. That means the 25t version will dry about 300t in 24 hours.

That might not be enough for a big farm, but Mr Lassen reckons it could be ideal for farmers who store grain at more than one site. Or who want something to boost their fixed drier in wet years.

Cost is £49,000 for the 15t unit, £55,000 for the 18t and £72,000 for the 25t.