Economic evaluation of container seedling packing and disinfection machinery

Abstract

Productivity and costs of packing container seedlings were studied in a mechanised line for packing and disinfecting seedling trays. The hypothesis was that adequate cost-efficiency could be achieved when some common principles of mechanisation were applied. Results indicated that the unit costs are lower than those of manual packing, if these principles were applied and the annual number of packed seedlings exceeded 6 million. However, most of the nurseries in Finland are still too small to gain a real advantage from large-scale production.

Effect of Seedling Production and Long-Distance Transportation Planning Strategies on Transportation Costs of a Nursery Company

“…Correspondingly, increased transportation costs caused by longer transportation distances with a smaller number of nursery units should be compared to the economic advantages achieved by larger production units. Nevertheless, according to this study and [9,10], it seems that current development towards larger size of production units gives marked advantages from the standpoint of production cost-effectiveness; and an unnecessary increase in transportation costs could be avoided due to better planning of transportation. International Journal of Forest Engineering ♦ 73 tween long-distance transportation and transportation to regeneration areas is indefinite: many of the seedlings can be transported directly from nurseries to regeneration areas.…”

“…1]. It can be assumed that greater economies of scale could also by enlarging the size of production units [9,10]. In Finland, the number of nurseries has been decreasing year by year, and it seems probable that in the near future this trend will continue.…”

“…It can be assumed that greater economies of scale could also be achieved in Finnish seedling production by enlarging the size of production units [9,10]. The management strategies used by a nursery company for long-distance seedling transportation were compared with different allocations of seedling production among nurseries.…”