Graingrowers verdict on the CR11

Originally published in Farm Weekly 8 January 2026.

Graingrower Geoff Sandilands took delivery of a New Holland CR11 combine last year to cover the harvest across all three farms.

Graingrower Geoff Sandilands, who runs three cropping programs in Kendenup, Gnowangerup, and Tambellup, took delivery of a New Holland CR11 combine last year to cover the harvest across all three farms. "It's about 106 kilometres between our farms," Mr Sandilands said.

Each paddock covers approximately 30 to 80 hectares worth of crop, with 40 per cent of the crop being canola, and the rest being wheat and barley, and a small portion of oats and lupins.

With the big yellow machine's 20,000 litre capacity and 775 horsepower, it's more than suited for large-scale cropping operations. Some of the other outstanding features of the machine includes a grain tank with an unload rate of 210 litres per second.

This combine's rotors are also two inches wider in diametre than the previous models of the CR9 and 10, and a metre longer at 3.6m. This provides greater capacity for the crop to circulate and the grain to be threshed and separated. Before acquiring the New Holland CR11, Mr Sandilands said they were using "all sorts of different colours" (brands).

"We had a couple of New Hollands, then we went to three John Deeres, then we had two CLAAS machines – we sold both of them after a demo last year in favour of one CR11," he said.

"I'd say we're the only people in the state that have gone from three, to two, to one header."

Mr Sandilands said when he was watching the CR11 in action at demos, he'd seen it was capable of averaging about 100 tonnes per hour.

"But we're in small paddocks, so what you see instantaneously and as an average can be different," he said.

When it came to cropping barley with the CR11, Mr Sandilands said they were averaging 70 tonnes per hour; and about 55 tonnes with wheat. Mr Sandilands also acquired a 60-foot MacDon front for the CR11 header, which has proven to be the model of efficiency.

"That front lifts really high, and we've hardly had to take it off," he said.

"It's little things like that, because it can lift over the strainer posts, we can get it to reach places we couldn't get our 45 footers."

He said they would often have to take the 45-foot front combs off and place them on the headers, which would further eat into their time.

"With that 60 front, we managed to do double what our two CLAAS machines were doing," he said.

"They were 770 CLAAS combines, so they were nearly the biggest headers you could buy when they were new, but it takes a bit of a leap of faith to believe you could do that, and sell both of your combines."

The acquisition of the CR11 meant that Mr Sandilands was able to reconfigure his labour force.

"When two of those are your own children, you've gone from having four employees to one employee," he said.

"For this harvest, we also had zero maintenance.

"In previous harvests, we were probably spending 60 to $70,000 on maintenance for two headers, so we also eliminated the cost on that.

"For this year's harvest, we're not expecting the cost of maintenance to be very big at all – we'll probably only be changing some oils and filters, so that should only cost about five to $10,000."

The number of drive components in the machine has been reduced by 25 per cent, and all the drive chains have been eliminated to further reduce downtime and maximise efficiency.

Mr Sandilands estimates that in the first year of purchasing the CR11 they would've saved about $140,000.

"The thing that I was telling my kids is that, this machine (the CR11), it just goes and it's really easy to service; our service time has probably gone from an hour-and-a-half per day to 30 minutes, and in some cases less than that," he said

"That's a serious change in how long it used to take us to clean down and have it ready – we're ready to go in the morning quicker.

"We've had some harvesters in the past that haven't been as effective after dark, but this one has actually been really good – it holds its capacity even more than I had anticipated in the dark.

"It's been a bit of a game-changer for us; unless you've had a demo, you can't understand just how big it is."

Assessing the season

If Mr Sandilands were to sum up this season's yields in a word, it'd be "average."

"We got too wet at Kendenup, so we're probably going to average 4 tonnes per hectare of wheat there, 4.2 t/ha of barley, and 3.2 t/ha of canola," he said.

He estimates they've lost 30 per cent of their crops in Kendenup due to ill-timed rainfall.

"The yield maps are quite unbelievable – where it was good we've seen 10 tonnes of barley, 8 to 9 tonnes of wheat," he said.

"But where it's too wet, we've got zero.

"We've had the biggest yields where it hasn't gotten too wet, but it's levelled out to about an average yield."

If you're interested in the New Holland CR11, or any of the CR range, please contact your local McIntosh & Son dealership for more information.