2018 has been the first year that New Leaf Irrigation has been able to offer in house Service and support. We now commission Netafim CMT installations and offer in season support for the range of Netafim CMT equipment and other components of your irrigation system. Our plans are to widen the support offering to Priva and Heron in the future to allow us to support all controllers we supply.

We have a store of parts to support the Netafim CMT systems in the UK, this allows us to respond to failures or modifications quickly. We can also program items before shipping if required saving the cost of an engineer coming out to program on site and reducing downtime.

NMC AIR has been rolled out to existing and new installations of Netafim CMT equipment allowing the grower to monitor and control their irrigation system from anywhere with an internet connection. This saves time and keeps the system running as it can be monitored for problems and managed without having to visit the controller. With NMC AIR you can start, stop valves and programs and edit programs and dosing if you spot something while in the field.

This year has also seen the launch of the Precision Irrigation Package (PIP), these units can read the coir moisture, temperature, EC, air temperature and humidity and solar radiation. This information is analysed in the unit to keep the moisture at a defined percentage within the grower defined timeframe. The PIP controls the irrigation for a block of tunnels, this system works from solar power with a backup battery, there is a modem on the unit to upload the information to the cloud where it is viewable on the quick view dashboard. The unit doesn't require an internet connection 24/7 as the processing is all done offline in the unit and in real time avoiding delays in uploading and downloading information. The PIP is a modular unit, so more options can be added as they are developed allowing for more control or feedback.

We've been looking into other new technologies to support our existing systems and new installations, feeding more information back to the grower and allowing them to make more informed choices.