Amadas Industries Built on Quality and Innovation
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
Since Oliver K. Hobbs and J. Carlie Adams created a partnership to produce peanut harvesting and processing equipment in 1962, the firm – now known as Amadas Industries – has prided itself on designing and building the highest quality machinery. Amadas stands for American manufactured, advanced design and absolute service.
"We get compliments from customers that ours is the least expensive machinery to own," said Amadas Vice President of Sales and Marketing Ted Williams. "While our machinery may not be inexpensive, growers understand the value of our design, quality, capacity, service and support, and resale value."
Amadas offers pull-type and self-propelled peanut combines, peanut diggers, cotton stalk puller/choppers, round cotton module handlers, heavy duty long reach mowers, Reel Rain® irrigators as well as a line of industrial equipment for the horticultural and recycling industries. The company manufactures equipment in Suffolk, VA, Albany, GA and through a joint venture in Cordoba, Argentina.
In the early 1990s, Amadas entered a joint venture with John Deere to develop self-propelled machinery. Deere provides the engine, cab and drive components and the machinery is sold exclusively through John Deere dealers. Through this joint venture, Amadas helped develop the world's largest and highest capacity self-propelled peanut combine.
Closely Held; Widely Sold
Fifty years after its founding, Amadas remains privately owned by key employees. According to Williams, peanut harvesting and processing equipment currently represents well over 50 percent of sales. Exports are an important part of the business.
"The company started exporting in 1965. Since harvest times south of the equator are six months off from U.S. harvests, we realized it was a very attractive opportunity to grow our business," Williams said.
"Today we export to 50 countries on all the major continents – Africa, South America, Australia, Asia and Europe. Export sales vary a great deal from year to year."
With global sales comes the need for global service and support. According to Williams, Amadas is providing parts and other support for equipment built in the 1970s that is still being used in Africa, for example.
Working Overtime
Given current commodity prices and strong peanut production in the U.S. and overseas, Amadas has continued to grow and expand. Williams characterizes 2012 as "our best year ever."
"We presold a huge amount of equipment in 2012 and now we're working overtime on both shifts to fill the orders we have."
The company had been anxious about the outlook for 2013 due to potential overplanting of peanuts this year. However, with peanut and cotton prices moderating some, the company has become more optimistic about 2013.
"We don't see the increase in acreage that was predicted and the USDA numbers support that view. Peanut demand is strong worldwide and stocks are still tight so we are definitely more bullish," Williams said.
Larger, Higher Capacity, More Efficient
With growers getting bigger, Amadas is focused on developing larger, more efficient and higher capacity machinery to support future farm operations. That involves additional engineering from existing technologies and exploring new technologies.
"We’re developing new equipment that can increase capacities and efficiencies and utilize new advances in information technology," Williams said.
One example is the unload-on-the-go option for the Model 2110 pull-type combine introduced in 2011. This option offers potential capacity increases of up to 25 percent.
"That higher capacity helps growers harvest more of their crop at optimum conditions and that helps maximize profits," Williams said.
According to Williams, Amadas has a history of advanced design and excellence in manufacturing that has made it the “best”.
More information on Amadas Industries is available at www.amadas.com.
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