- 2025 marks fifty years since TR70 model launched in 1975
- CR development introduced across Europe and worldwide in 2001
- Milestone marked as latest CR10 and CR11 combines enter production
New Holland is marking the 50th year since introducing the first combines featuring the brand’s Twin Rotor threshing and separation technology, a product line which has grown from a single model in 1975 to a complete range today, led by the new CR10 and CR11.
The milestone will be celebrated globally with special displays at shows and exhibitions.
Over 70,000 TR and CR Twin Rotor combines have been produced globally to date. New Holland’s Centre of Harvesting Excellence in Zedelgem, Belgium, has recently undergone significant investment and upgrading for production of the latest CR10 and CR11 models.
New Holland enters the combine market
Well-known for its expertise in grassland farming products such as balers and forage harvesting equipment, New Holland, then primarily a US-based manufacturer, entered the combine market in 1964 when it acquired Belgian company Claeys, which had introduced its first self-propelled combine in 1952. Over the decade that followed the acquisition, New Holland continued to develop the conventional straw-walker combine line it had acquired, but during the 1960s began to investigate new ways of threshing and separating grain to boost output, increase cleanliness and reduce losses.
The first Twin Rotor combine
To do this, New Holland engineers studied centrifugal force and its potential for separating grain from plant matter, an innovative concept distinctly different from the drum/concave and straw-walker traditional method of threshing and separation. The first development machine, adapted from a 985 straw-walker model from the Claeys factory in Belgium, was trialled in corn in 1968, and wheat the following year. The trials showed benefits from splitting the incoming crop flow from the elevator/feeder house into two streams, feeding it into two counter-rotating longitudinal rotors working against longitudinal concaves that consisted of threshing sections followed by separation sections. The high speed of the rotors meant centrifugal force ejected much of the grain through the concaves, minimising grain damage when compared to conventional drum and concave threshing, and minimising losses when set against straw-walker separation.
By 1969, a totally new combine design with these internal elements was under test, and in 1975 the first production model, the TR70 with a 145hp engine and 5,550-litre/158-bushel grain tank, was launched – the first New Holland combine built in the USA. For 1979 it was replaced by the upgraded TR75, and joined by a larger companion, the TR85. Over the next two decades the range evolved, with the 25,000th TR combine produced in 1997.
European high-capacity combine development had taken a separate path with the development of the Twin-Flow combines introduced in 1983. These used a conventional drum and concave followed by a large beater and rotary separator and then a lateral Twin Flow rotor that split the crop into two streams to separate the final grains.
However, by the late 1990s New Holland engineers in Europe and North America began work on a totally new Twin Rotor design that would meet the needs of farmers around the world in all types of combinable crop. Introduced in 2002 and blending key features from the TR and TF machines with new developments and styling, the new 333hp CR960 and 428hp CR980 were initially built in the USA, before production was transferred in 2005 to the Zedelgem plant in Belgium.
