Recently, coffee growers across Dak Lak were surprised by the debut of a hand-held coffee harvesting machine created by “farmer–engineer” Ha Thanh Vinh.
Field Test of the Coffee Picker
The trial was held in the ripening coffee orchard of Y Xuenh Ênuôl (Dhă Prông hamlet, Cu Êbur commune, Buon Ma Thuot City). With a single light motion of Vinh’s hand-held machine, a 40 cm coffee branch heavy with cherries was stripped clean of fruit in seconds, leaving only stems and leaves. For many farmers, the machine’s appearance was a welcome development as the 2011–2012 harvest season began.
Vinh’s coffee picker is compact and lightweight: the device itself weighs just 1 kg and is powered by a 2 kg, 6-volt dry battery. At only 54 cm long, it easily slips between branches to strip the fruit. The key feature is a pair of V-shaped rollers, spinning at 1,150 rpm, that shake the cherries off quickly without effort.
“Using this machine equals the output of four manual pickers,” Vinh explained. “It can strip an entire branch in a second and harvest more than one ton of fresh cherries a day. With its light weight and battery carried on the body, even women can operate it. Each day it costs only about 500 VND in electricity to recharge.”
Outstanding Features
According to Vinh, the machine stays cool in operation, makes almost no noise, and does not cause leaf drop. The dry battery lasts over seven hours of continuous work. Each unit sells for about 2.5 million VND, comes with a one-year warranty and an instructional DVD. In contrast, some farmers in the Central Highlands still buy modified grass-cutters for coffee picking at 5–6 million VND apiece, yet those are far less efficient.
Y Xuenh Ênuôl commented: “Before, hand-picking coffee was slow and tiring. Since using this hand-held machine, it’s much more effective—my wife, my child and I can harvest 17 sacks a day.”
Nguyen Van Phan, Vice Chairman of the Dak Lak Mechanical Association, said: “This machine is a breakthrough for the province’s engineering sector. Older machines powered by gasoline engines were noisy and unhealthy. This battery-powered model is safe, environmentally friendly, and can sharply reduce the need for coffee-harvest labor so farmers can focus on other tasks.”
A member of the Dak Lak Mechanical Association, Vinh spent three years researching and refining the design to suit Vietnam’s coffee trees. Remarkably, he has no plans to patent the invention, hoping instead that it will be widely copied to benefit coffee farmers everywhere. With its clear time- and cost-saving advantages, his hand-held coffee harvester promises to bring practical economic benefits to growers in Dak Lak and throughout Vietnam’s coffee regions.