FAE USA Annual Sales Meeting

The first of two days of meetings started at Lake Lanier Islands resort in north Georgia with product training and marketing strategies and continued on day two with additional training and a demo.

With the addition of several new territory managers, the FAE USA staff focused training on the entire FAE and PrimeTech equipment and attachment lines. Several new FAE product offerings for 2013, which were introduced at the meeting, had many looking forward to getting back to their territories to spread the good news.

“The new low flow DML/HY125 and DML/SSL125 are going to be the hottest selling attachments on the market,” said Dave Evans, territory manager in the Carolina’s. “If you think about the low flow industry for heavy brush clearing, there’s only brush cutters and flail mowers. There’s maybe only one other low flow drum style rotary mulcher on the market. The way FAE has designed their new low flow mulcher, I truly believe this is going to be one of the year’s hot sellers.”

Ken Pryzgoda, territory manager of Colo., N.M., and Wyo., was equally impressed with the new FAE USA DML/HY & DML/SSL mulchers.

“With the high speed rotor system having a smaller diameter and turning faster with the new design tooth, these attachments will really open a new market of the low flow machine owners … it’s a very fast cutting machine,” he said.

FAE USA CEO Giorgio Carera was in attendance and noted that everyone seemed very positive that the market is coming back. He said that this optimism coupled with the new products being launched would make for a good year.

“We have new products ... including our new low flow mulching attachments we are introducing at this meeting,” he said. “We explored this market for quite some time and found there was a good potential with contractors that own low flow machines who want to do multiple jobs and be able to add the ability to grind and mulch material and underbrush. What we saw were a lot of low flow skid steers owned by contractors looking for other options to fully utilize their machines and expand into other types of work. With the majority of the skid steer loaders on the market being low flow machines, this was a natural progression for our lineup of mulchers. These new attachments also carry over into utilization in the farming industry.”

Carera added, “FAE prides itself on using the best engineering and technology available as well as the best materials, such as Hardox steel. The majority of the attachment body that contains the main wear parts are protected by Hardox. Because of this, we are the only manufacturer in this segment of the industry that is able to carry the Hardox logo on our attachments.”

Americans consume on average nearly fifty percent more salt than is recommended by the nutritionists and government guidelines. But several outside researchers cautioned that although there are already good health arguments for lowering salt intake, the connection between salt and autoiummune disease needs more research to prove whether it holds true in the human body -- and is an important trigger.

Daniel Cua, a senior principal scientist at Merck Research Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., called the studies “remarkable,” but added that the diseases are complex and salt is likely to be just one of many risk factors.

“People have different genetic predispositions to various diseases, including autoimmune disease,” Cua said. “If you genetically have a very high susceptibility to autoimmune disease, it may be by reducing salt, you’re taking away that one” risk.