How did the Gombos Family Pioneer the Hay Export Industry?
Since their start in 1978, most of today’s hay export industry standards resulted from Gombos family innovations, improvements, and handling methods. In the early days, alfalfa cubes were trans-loaded into containers and exported. Within a few years, customers began to demand long-fiber hay products in addition to alfalfa cubes. They now wanted alfalfa bales.
Why did Alfalfa Bales Get Smaller and Heavier?
As it became necessary to figure out how to increase the weight of alfalfa bales, double-compression was born. By double compression, we mean densifying the alfalfa bale so it becomes half the size and twice the weight. Note: The Gombos Company now uses Natural Compression to accomplish the same result.
However, now that the alfalfa bales were smaller, they were still very heavy and difficult to handle. This gave way to half-cutting of alfalfa bales. In fact, John and Mike started cutting bales in-half with a chainsaw many years before the compressing process included half-cutting.
With twice the number of bales (double compressed and half-cut), wrapping the alfalfa bales together for easier loading, storage, and handling became necessary. We created a “unitizing” process we now refer to as G-PAC™. Each G-PAC™ unit containers either 12 full or 24 half-cut alfalfa bales wrapped together.
What Other Hay Export Industry Patents and Innovations are Related to The Gombos Company?
- The first nationally recognized grading system for alfalfa and other hay
- Double compression technology to achieve maximum container weights
- Half-cutting alfafla bales for ease of handling
- Unitizing alfalfa bales for ease of loading and storage protection
- Slide-unloading unitized bales from containers
- Private label strapping for increased channel development and loyalty
A full list of hay export industry related patents is listed here: John Gombos Patents