Heinrich Gerber is a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. Now he’s built a machine that can mine that earth for its salt.
20 October 2022 - 05:00Heinrich Gerber at the controls of the salt harvester, with Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Retief Odendaal. Picture: Supplied
The 45t salt harvester took Gerber and his team more than a year to build, working 12 hours a day. Recently he was able to give his creation a quick spin before it was disassembled for the trip to Botswana. It will be transported in three or four different components and will take four to five days by road, assuming all goes smoothly at the border controls, says Gerber.
Gerber took a conventional salt harvester into the 21st century, with a swivel cab that allows the driver-operator to keep an eye on the elevator putting salt into the trucks. Lupondwana says remote technology involved with the harvester can “foresee any problems before they even occur, to save the client time and money”.
Gerber was disappointed that he “couldn’t really give it a go” in the limited space of the firm’s assembly hall, but has set his sights on putting the monster back together in Botswana. “The salt pans are flat as far as the eye can see with beautiful pods of flamingos in the distance. I keep imagining how cool it will be to be the one commissioning ‘my baby’.”
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