Angus firm to unveil new spot sprayer

Angus based pre­ci­sion farm­ing specialist Soi­lessen­tials has fur­ther expan­ded its award-win­ning SKAI spot­s­pray­ing range with the intro­duc­tion of a new 9m model.

According to Soi­lessen­tials, the new machine gives farm­ers an addi­tional option in the grow­ing line-up of smart spray­ing solu­tions.

It joins 12m, 15m and 24m mod­els in the SKAI range, mak­ing it the fourth size avail­able.

The sprayer, with a work­ing width of 9m, will make its pub­lic debut on the Soi­lessen­tials stand at the Royal High­land Show, tak­ing place from June 18-21 at Ing­liston, Edin­burgh.

Designed and developed in-house by the Soi­lessen­tials team, SKAI uses advanced cam­era technology, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and pre­ci­sion nozzle con­trol to identify and tar­get weeds in real time, apply­ing herb­i­cide only where required.

The tech­no­logy boasts Made in Bri­tain status and has received mul­tiple industry accol­ades for its innov­at­ive approach to redu­cing chem­ical use while main­tain­ing effect­ive weed con­trol.

While the lar­ger SKAI mod­els have proven par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar with con­tract­ors and larger­scale oper­a­tions, the new 9m option has been developed with indi­vidual farm­ing busi­nesses in mind.

Soi­lessen­tials gen­eral man­ager Gregor Welsh said:

“The intro­duc­tion of the 9m model rep­res­ents the next step in the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of the SKAI range, ensur­ing more busi­nesses can access the bene­fits of spot-spray­ing tech­no­logy regard­less of their scale of oper­a­tion.”

The firm – based at Hilton of Fern , near Brechin – said it had seen strong uptake of its grass­land- focused SKAI model, which cur­rently tar­gets docks and thistles.

Devel­op­ment work is ongo­ing to expand the sys­tem’s cap­ab­il­it­ies, with rag­wort, nettles and rushes all pro­gress­ing through advanced test­ing stages.

Addi­tional mod­els are also in pro­gress.

Soi­lessen­tials was launched in 2000 by three for­ward-think­ing farm­ers – Jim Wilson , Robert Ram­say and Roy Wat­son. They had a shared ambi­tion to revolu­tion­ise agri­cul­ture through t he power of tech­no­logy.

What star­ted as a small team has grown into a nation­ally recog­nised leader in pre­ci­sion farm­ing.

Jim remains at the helm as man­aging dir­ector.

He has a ded­ic­ated team behind him across machine con­trol, agro­nomy ser­vices and soft­ware devel­op­ment, all help­ing to shape the future of farm­ing.

This article appeared in the Courier on 10 June 2026