Decatur, Ill. — Kinze brought its all-new 4700 planter, a 36-row, 20-inch unit, to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur for growers interested in narrow row spacing.

“Kinze has always been in the 3620, the 20-inch market. But what this planter does is it gives us a little bit more versatility than we’ve had in the past,” said Eric Broadbent, director of sales in North America for Kinze manufacturing.

“So now we’ve got three points of flex, 15 degrees up or down in each of those sections.”

The 4700 is a three-section planter.

The company plans to use the same 60-foot frame for a 24 row, 30-inch configuration, and will also be coming out with a 24-row 20-inch setup on a 40-foot frame, still within the 4700 series.

The 4700 uses the model 4000 row unit, which is composed of cast steel and has load-equalizing gauge wheels, parallel linkage, powder coat paint and a 24-inch toolbar height.

“We wanted to make sure we had optimal road clearance, so in transport we wanted to make sure that the wing tires and wheels had plenty of road clearance,” Broadbent said.

“What we found is that we can get, with the positive locking on the wings over the centre hitch, we could actually raise that up another 13 inches.”

The bulk-fill planter has commodity tank capacity of 120-bushels of seed and 600 gallons of fertilizer.

The 4700 is capable of planting at up to eight m.p.h., but the company is working on a new delivery system that will enable the planter to operate at higher speeds.

“Our vacuum meter does have a seed disk for canola. We’ve also been developing for rapeseed with our European division,” Broadbent said.

“We also have the capability to plant wheat with our true rate vacuum meter. We have a wheat disk and we singular wheat very well.”

Kinze offers a variety of row cleaners, coulter blades, and closing wheels.

The planter uses Kinze’s true depth hydraulic down force system, which is a row-by-row reacting hydraulics that helps maintain uniform depth across the planter.

The metering system on the 4700 is electric.

“Blue Drive is our electric drive, and that is all developed in-house. All of the architecture across the planter is all developed by Kinze,” Broadbent said.

“The architecture is Blue Drive, and then the user interface and the software that runs behind that and the data collection that goes along with that is Blue Vantage.”

Blue Drive includes individual row modules to monitor and control each row unit, including curve compensation.

Blue Drive is not ISOBUS compatible. Instead, it is a self-contained system that comes with a 12-inch touch screen that displays diagnostics, planting parameters and controls.

The fully equipped 4700, including tracks, retails for about US$450,000 and is expected to be available for spring planting in 2020.

However, tracks for the unit won’t be available until 2021, so all of the 2020 planters will be equipped with tires.