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An Interview with T-Winch founder Markus Krenn

Tilhill talks to T-Winch founder Markus Krenn as part of the Monthly theme, Harvesting Technicalities

Q. Tell us about yourself, how you started and when the T-Winch was created.

A. I am from Tragöß, near the center of Austria. I have been the CEO of my own forestry business since 1995 together with my brother Johann Krenn. We specialise in steep slopes with a cable crane.

I met Andreas Jahrer and Christian Seunig in 2008 when they worked for Konrad Forsttechnik as we were customers of Konrad. After some time they left Konrad and begun working for our logging company. Both of them were running harvesters and we were running a forwarder.  The idea to build the T-WINCH was founded during coffee breaks during logging operations with the harvester and forwarder. The T-WINCH was fully self-funded through our logging company.

The company was built because we quickly reached our limits as we had very long lanes and the attached rope winch was too short therefore we decided to build an external winch.  That was in 2011, so together with our harvester riders and two great people Jahrer Andreas and Seunig Christian the T-Winch was born.

In September 2014 it became an official company called ecoforst GmbH in Tragöß. In February 2015, we delivered the first production machine to Switzerland. In the first year we were able to build and sell 12 units. Currently, we are building 2 units per month.

Our main markets are Germany, Chile, Austria, Canada, Slovakia, UK, USA, Brazil, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Norway. There are also now two machines traveling to New Zealand.

 

Q. What are your plans for the future?

A. Since the first T-WINCH was built we started expanding. There are now different sizes of the T-WINCH and a small harvesting head available. We hope to expand into other markets in the future, for example, the construction industry.

Moving forward we have now upgraded to T-Winch 10.1 and now T-WINCH 10.2 is available too.

What makes our company unique is our external winch is different to other similar machines in not only it’s functionality but also it’s speed and price.

 

The T Winch is highly used by Tilhill's contractors in Forestry and Harvesting operations, Tilhill Harvesting Managers say:

 

At the beginning of the year we secured a 32000 tonne project which required felling trees in some steeper areas. It would possibly have required a Skyline to work but our contractor was able to purchase a T-Winch to work the steeper ground. As the T-winch is a relatively new machine to the UK, little is known on how the machine would have performed here with the varied terrain. As this project is coming to an end, the T-Winch has done very well and exceeded expectations.

 

For more info Visit ecoforst at www.ecoforst.at

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