Rinieri’s Cpl pre-pruners simplify manual finishing operations, improving both farm profitability and the working conditions of vineyard crews during the coldest months of the year.
Vine pruning is a lengthy and labor-intensive operation that is often carried out under harsh weather conditions, as it takes place in late autumn and early winter. Mechanical pre-pruning provides an effective way to prepare the vines by shortening the canes before the final manual pruning stage, making the subsequent work significantly easier.
Mechanical pre-pruning dramatically reduces the amount of vegetation that must be removed manually, particularly when the vineyard’s training system is suited to this practice. Typical examples include the Guyot system, the most widely used vine training method worldwide, and CLST (Free Cordon with Total Spur Pruning), a permanent cordon system designed to ensure a more uniform crop load in the following season.
In vineyards managed with these training systems, pre-pruning offers substantial advantages by greatly simplifying the final hand-pruning operation, resulting in significant labor savings. While conventional pruning without pre-pruning typically requires between 30 and 50 working hours per hectare, mechanical pre-pruning reduces the total requirement to between 6 and 18 hours per hectare, depending on the vineyard layout.
Several pre-pruner configurations are available on the market, including inverted L-shaped and inverted U-shaped machines. The former requires two passes along each row—one in each direction—whereas the latter completes the operation in a single pass. In practice, the difference amounts to roughly one working hour per hectare, with inverted L models requiring approximately two and a half hours compared with around one and a half hours for inverted U versions.
Among the most effective solutions are Rinieri’s front-mounted CPL series pre-pruners, available in the Tower 1 Plus and Vision 1 Plus versions. The latter features the Vision frame, whose lowered central structure provides improved forward visibility, allowing more precise positioning and adjustment of the cutting head.
These machines are also relatively lightweight, weighing approximately 300 kg, and therefore require only modest tractor power. Their hydraulic demand is equally limited, requiring oil flows of between 25 and 35 liters per minute depending on the number of cutting units fitted and the volume of vegetation being pruned.
The frame’s lateral movement is exceptionally smooth thanks to its bearing-mounted design and is controlled through a combination of hydraulic and manual adjustment.
Cutting is performed by high-strength steel discs measuring 400 mm in diameter and 4 mm in thickness. The machines are available with four, six, eight, or ten pairs of cutting discs.
Disc spacing is set at 100 mm for models designed for spur-pruned cordon vineyards and 70 mm for machines intended for Guyot-trained vineyards. Both cutting configurations can be fitted to either the Tower 1 Plus or Vision 1 Plus frames. The Tower version is additionally equipped with a pair of serrated finishing discs positioned at the base of the cutting columns to improve the quality of the final cut.
Title: Rinieri Cpl pre-pruners: productivity and comfort
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