Matthew Koch had never heard of the name CLAAS when he applied to work for the company in Omaha in 1999. “At that time, CLAAS had formed a joint venture with Caterpillar and that was the name that attracted me.” The 54-year-old Production Director at the Omaha factory smiles with satisfaction, because unlike then, nowadays the CLAAS brand means something in North America, mainly thanks to him. He grins when he remembers his early days with the company: “Here in the US, the farmers just called us the ’LEXION guys‘. Although nobody was familiar with the CLAAS brand, they knew about the product. But that’s all changed now!“

Omaha is the largest city in the US state of Nebraska in the Midwest. The landscape is impressive—huge fields, one after another, stretching for hundreds of miles, interspersed here and there with small towns and farms. Anyone driving a pick-up along the seemingly endless roads can see at once why Nebraska is known as “The Breadbasket”: more than 90% of the land here is used for agriculture, making Nebraska one of the most important producers of agricultural products in the US.

The entrance area of the CLAAS factory in Omaha is surrounded by vast floor-to-ceiling windows, creating a friendly, welcoming impression for visitors entering for the first time. In addition to the 183 thousand square foot production building, there is also a prototype workshop for Development, the Quality Management department, a test track and offices. CLAAS Omaha builds more than 600 LEXION 6000, 7000 and 8000 models here each year. “We still haven’t utilized the full production capacities”, explains Matthew Koch. Many more ambitious goals still beckon, as he sees it. Omaha is a success story which he and his colleagues at the site have yet to finish writing.

New machines for large fields

CLAAS can trace its history in the US back more than 50 years, although the company made its debut on the US market under different names. The first of these was Ford. In 1965 CLAAS signed a partnership agreement with the American company; combine harvesters supplied by Harsewinkel were exported to the US with the blue-and-white finish. The agreement expired in the 1980s, so in 1989 CLAAS joined forces with Massey Ferguson, and the combine harvesters were painted red, and sold under another name. Blue-and-white or red, the machines proved popular because they were exactly what the farmers desperately needed, explains Matthew Koch.

The US is a vast country stretching over several climate zones. The farms and the produce they grow are just as varied as the country itself. While large quantities of rice are grown in California and the south east, the Midwest is known as the corn and soya bean belt. Wheat is grown mainly in the middle, as well as in Canada, along with other types of grain.

Corn is a good example of how arable farming in the US is different from that in Germany. The land area in the US is much bigger, but so is the planting density for corn: around twice as many plants grow on the same area of land. Many are genetically modified and yield more cobs with more kernels per cob.

As a result, there is huge demand for high-performance machines, especially combine harvesters, which can cope with these yields, explains Matthew Koch. “Under very good conditions, you can get yields of up to 12 tons per acre. Cultivation methods in the US are world class. Other major growing regions such as Europe or Ukraine achieve only roughly a quarter of that, or about 3 tons per acre.”

By farmers for farmers

There’s still plenty of room to grow in Omaha. “We have more than 123 acres of land we can build on and currently we’re only using a very small portion of it”, says Matthew Koch. “So there’s nothing standing in the way of CLAAS of America’s development. We have plenty of room for new product lines, and maybe even for manufacturing, including blanking and painting.”

When asked to describe in one sentence what drives him, the production manager doesn’t waste any time thinking about it. As the son of farmers, his motivation has much to do with his roots in this region and his childhood on the farm. “Producing high quality machines to help the people I grew up with—that makes me really happy.”