40 Years of KOMPOmat

Developed for Livestock Farming
The trained television technician Friedrich Backhus developed his first compost turner for his parents' farm. They had specialised in cattle farming, but the large quantities of liquid manure produced proved to be harmful to the surrounding upland moor in Harbern II near Oldenburg. His parents therefore decided to purchase a separation plant to separate the liquid part of the slurry from the solids. This meant that the liquid manure could already be applied to the fields as fertiliser, but the solids still posed a problem. Backhus realised that this waste product could be converted into compost and marketed. "The market for the finished product – organic cow manure – was there," he explains. "It was a programme against peat and so we had a substitute product." Mixing it with an equal proportion of straw and a small amount of peat already produced a reasonable quality of compost, but turning it with a fork simply proved to be inefficient at this scale. The few solutions available on the market did not appeal to him either, so he developed the concept for his first turner. Together with a blacksmith friend from the village, he set about making the KOMPOmat. "I was still in the workshop myself at the time; I was eager to do it myself," Friedrich Backhus recalls in the interview. "That was when the tinkerer came through."

The KOMPOmat – Blueprint for a Successful Concept
At first glance, the first KOMPOmat has little in common with the BAKCHUS turners of today, but this impression is deceptive. Even this first machine offered some of the basic advantages that would later make BACKHUS turning technology so successful. For example, the KOMPOmat was already a self-propelled machine and thus allowed the extremely space-saving foot-to-foot arrangement of triangular windrows. The use of triangular windrows for composting was perhaps the most important advantage. In contrast to table windrows, these allow easier treatment of individual batches, are much more water-repellent and have the special chimney draught effect. During composting, the microorganisms generate natural process heat, which also heats the air inside the windrow, causing it to rise upwards and escape from the top. This creates a suction effect, which – like in a chimney – draws fresh air into the windrow from below. The supply of fresh air to the microorganisms is perhaps the most important factor for the speed of the composting process. The combination of the chimney draught effect and regular turning significantly accelerated the process and thus contributed significantly to the high efficiency of the process. At the same time, homogenisation of the material was already apparent during the first trials. Inclusions were effectively avoided and the compost quality was increased by the KOMPOmat. In comparison, the frequently practised turning of table windrows with wheel loaders was no longer efficient: it took much longer with poorer results and was therefore also considerably more expensive.

From a Means to an End
For Friedrich Backhus, the KOMPOmat was originally a "means to an end". With the company BACKHUS, founded in 1985, he was actually interested in marketing the compost he produced. However, with the machine he had created a solution that met with general interest. After all, many livestock farms were struggling with the same problem and compost site operators and earthworks were also enquiring about his invention as early as 1984. However, the KOMPOmat from 1984 never went into series production in this form. It was not until the KOMPOmat III that Backhus created a version of his turner designed for sale, the third machine of which was even exported to Japan shortly after its market launch in 1989. A visit by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Töpfer, during which he officially commissioned the first KOMPOmat III himself, had previously given the young company additional recognition beyond the borders of Germany. The sale of the machines now promised to be a lucrative business. Over the following decades, Backhus continued to develop its turners and customised them with a wide range of additional options for all kinds of special applications. Today, for example, the machines can be equipped with concentrate spraying systems, irrigation systems, side conveyers or fleece winders. In addition to composting, the machines were also quickly put to use in the biological drying of waste or in the remediation of contaminated soil. The range was also expanded to include various machine sizes for turning capacities depending on the customer's requirements.
Backhus and his colleagues developed a deep understanding of composting through their close contact with universities. Backhus sums up that he personally learnt the most from Dr Frank Schuchardt. Schuchardt, for example, conducted intensive research into more climate-friendly palm oil production and saw composting with turners as the key solution. Backhus and his colleagues shared this kind of expertise with their customers, making a significant contribution to their success. BACKHUS quickly went from being a compost soil distributor to the world market leader for mobile turning technology.

Yellow Becomes Blue
Friedrich Backhus decided early on to sell his flourishing company, as none of his five children wanted to take over as managing director in the long term. In 2012, he sold BACKHUS to the plant manufacturer Eggersmann, which entered the mobile recycling business as a result of the takeover. This also changed the appearance of the machines and the famous yellow paintwork gave way to Eggersmann blue. Eggersmann expanded its own portfolio even further in the following years and today offers customers the complete package in mobile processing. Even fully mobile composting plants are possible: organic waste can be shredded, sieved, sifted and then composted with Eggersmann machines.