Prinoth, Ponsse Teaming Up In Forestry

Prinoth, an Italian manufacturer of tracked vehicles, has announced it will participate with Ponsse, a Swedish maker of cut-to-length forestry machines, and a consortium of European forestry institutes to develop a timber forwarder with rubber tracks that can protect the forests and soils while improving productivity and access to sensitive forest grounds.

Consortium members were looking to set more stringent thresholds for damage, to adopt improved operations practices and to better regulate the creation and treatment of ruts. Prinoth’s Panther undercarriages are designed to have a round pressure as low as 4 psi and provided the best solution, according to the consortium.

As part of the project, a Panther undercarriage will be assembled into a Ponsse timber forwarder. “We are quite confident that the payload capabilities in extreme off-road conditions that our undercarriage system can provide is the solution that this consortium has been looking for,” said Alessandro Ferrari, vice president of Sales for the Tracked Utility Vehicles Business unit at Prinoth. “This new partnership with Ponsse and the consortium is really exciting for us and we look forward to seeing the tests’ results.”