ELHO Scorpio 550 Rock Picker gets rocks from a hard place

The machine is produced by a 50-year-old agricultural equipment manufacturer that had once concentrated solely on hay and silage gear.

Colac Ag distributes the hydraulically driven ELHO Scorpio 550 Rock Picker exclusively in Australia. It is the importing and wholesale division of Greg Allan Farm Machinery, which retails the products, as do other dealers.

Colac Ag sales and operations director Jon Allan said the Scorpio 550 was given a soft launch in Australia last year.

“This machine represents ELHO’s first venture into stone collecting, with units released progressively around the world over the past five years,” Mr Allan said.

“It’s essentially a single-pass operation for picking up rocks from on top of the ground, with a V-style rock rake feeding into a centralised picking rotor.

“Traditionally, you’d rake your rocks into windrows, then go through with a picker and collect the windrows, but this machine is a one-pass operation.

“Responses from the market have been excellent – the real problem is we can’t get new machines in fast enough.”

The Scorpio 550’s 16 wide side-rake tines are made of Hardox steel and firmly welded on to the rotor tube. Rotor bearings are built into the steel tube.

Side rakes can be reversed to remove blockages and the rake rotor is mounted far from its frame to prevent stones wedging.

Every steel bar in the sieve is replaceable. The distance between the sieve bars is 40 to 110mm but every second sieve steel bar can be removed to create a larger gap.

The machine has a hopper with a tipping height of 2.7 metres to reach over the sides of a big trailer, steel frame, telescopic drawbar with overload protection, wide rakes and large tandem wheels.

The tractor power requirement is upwards of 73kW (100hp-plus) and machine weight is 5.8 tonnes. The Scorpio 550 costs $126,500.