Primary Sales Australia

How fast could knife guards and extensions pay for themselves on your place?

   

Punch in your numbers — your hectares by crop, yield, your front loss (or use GRDC figures for loss) — and see what fitting Adapt-A-Gap guards and extensions could be worth to you this harvest.

Let see if the numbers stack up in your crops.

What are you growing, and what's the header leaving behind?

Add a row for each crop in your program. If you've already run a Drop Pan, use those numbers — they'll give you the most accurate picture.

What that could be worth to you

Totalled across everything you've entered above.

Extra grain in the bin, after the cost of the guards
$0
Across your program
Total area 0 ha
Grain you'd keep 0.0 t
What that grain's worth $0
Cost of the guards $0
How quickly it pays for itself —
$0
PER HA, AVG
0%
RETURN, YEAR 1
0
EXTRA BAGS/AC*

What would the guards cost you?

Most growers fit these themselves, so we've left labour out — it's your time, and you know what that's worth better than we do.

$
Give Primary Sales a call for current pricing for your front width and finger setup.
How this calculator works

There's no single published number for "how much front loss Adapt-A-Gap guards or Cereal Extensions save" — it depends on your crop, density, and front condition. Rather than guess, this calculator works off your own before-and-after numbers — what you've measured with a Drop Pan, or what you'd expect based on the reference ranges we show.

Those reference ranges come from real measurements taken in WA paddocks, not marketing figures: the GRDC/Grower Group Alliance "Measuring Harvest Losses in the Western Region" trials, run across the 2021/22 and 2022/23 seasons, with measurement protocols developed alongside Glen Reithmuller (DPIRD WA) and Peter Broley (Primary Sales). We show them as ranges because front loss swings a lot from paddock to paddock — a single average can be misleading, especially in canola.

We don't claim a specific loss-reduction percentage for fitting guards or extensions, because no independently verified figure for that exists yet. What you put in for "after fitment" should be your own measured or expected result — this tool just does the dollar math for you.

Sources
  • Front loss reference ranges: GRDC/Grower Group Alliance "Measuring Harvest Losses in the Western Region" reports — 2021/22 season (200 tests) and 2022/23 season (156 tests, project code GGA2211-001SAX), prepared by Ben White and Daniel Kidd. Methodology developed with Glen Reithmuller (DPIRD WA) and Peter Broley (Primary Sales Australia), using Bushel Plus drop tray measurement. Figures are front loss only — they exclude rotor/sieve/machine loss.
  • Wheat: 0.9% (2021, n=34) to 1.0% (2022, n=30). Barley: 1.8% (2022, n=30) to 2.4% (2021, n=26). Canola: 0.89% (2021, n=44) to 2.1% (2022, n=44) — the 2022 figure includes two outlier paddocks; individual results in that trial ranged from near 0% to over 30%. Lupins: 8.5% (2021, n=26) to 11.0% (2022, n=24).
  • Lentils: 4.7% average front loss (2021, n=10) — the only season lentil-specific data was collected, as lentils were excluded from the 2022 trial due to early harvest timing. In that trial, fitting an air reel reduced lentil front loss from 6.9% to 2.5%. Other pulses (chickpeas, faba beans, field peas) ranged 1.5–9.1% total loss across both seasons. Primary Sales-led research is expected to add to this dataset in coming seasons.
  • Industry acceptable-loss guidance: front/machine losses under 1% of yield in cereals, under 2–3% in canola, per the Society of Agricultural Engineers, Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute and Kondinin Group, as cited in both GGA reports.
  • *Bags/acre conversion uses the standard approximation of 1 bag ≈ 1 bushel ≈ 0.2 t/ha used in Primary Sales Adapt-A-Gap gap-setting tables, for illustrative comparison only.