Congratulations to Joe McDonald of Covington Gin for being named the 2004 GINNER OF THE YEAR at the Southern Southeastern annual meeting in Destin, Florida on January 22, 2005. We are proud to have him as a customer!!

After the 2004 season Mr. McDonald reported that his Power Roll Gin Stands had much improved performance. Other than a few minor issues in the early part of the season the stands performed well, as they should, and most of the issues experienced during the 2003 season were eliminated.

As one of those "good problems to have" the stands could lull his ginners into becoming comfortable and failing to check them as often as they should. Since rib tags were virtually non-existent they would grow tired of opening the stands and removing the seed roll to check for rib tags only to find none. Then toward the end of the season during a very wet spell they had to gin some cotton that was nearly impossible due to very wet, mushy seed. Since this cotton was so difficult to gin a few rib tags occurred and they came as a surprise since they had ginned so long without any.

At Covington Gin in Andalusia, Alabama they run 2 Continental 141 gin stands. They converted both of their stands with to Power Roll Gin Stands. Here is what Joe McDonald had to say.

"We have been ginning at least as much as we wanted to gin or even a little better than expected. Running 27 bales per hour on our two 141s is now what we normally do. We have to be a little careful to keep from overrunning our lint cleaners. Before this year we did 24 bales per hour. We can't do a direct turnout comparison since we converted all of our stands but our turnout is good and we know that we are putting more lint into the bale because we see less in the seed house. Our producers have been pleased and some even believe that they may be getting an extra bale out of their modules compared to what they used to get. We have had a few mechanical issues to work through and no one enjoys that but at this stage of development it is not unexpected. Luckily this year hasn't been like last year as far as the wet, rough cotton we had to deal with last year. But when we have had some wet cotton these stands slow themselves down a little and just keep ginning!"