February 2002
Sale of first lightbar system and Trimble dealership
Since 1996, Geometius has been a Trimble importer for the Netherlands and offers solutions to surveying, GIS & mapping and the hydrographic sector. In 2002, Geometius was approached by Trimble because a Dutch farmer was interested in a GPS steering aid. The sale of the first Trimble steering aid thus followed and Geometius obtained the Trimble Ag dealership for the Benelux.
April 2003
First RTK Autopilot system in Europe
In 2003, the first RTK-GPS autopilot system was sold to an organic farmer who wanted to set to work with fixed paths. Installing it and putting it into operation was a daunting task but finally the system steered extremely accurately and this novelty received plenty of attention in the journals.
October 2003
Dennis Nijland chooses agriculture
Dennis Nijland, the current managing director, worked at that time in the Support department and wanted to take care of the agricultural products. The management of Geometius agreed and from that time Dennis took care of the sales, service and support of the agricultural systems, all on his own. During that period, he sold various steering aids and a number of RTK Autopilot systems and built on the dealer network.
March 2006
Delivery to 3F Project
Dennis realized a large deal involving 5 basic stations and 25 RTK-GPS steering systems for the Future Farming Flevoland project. To install and to support all of this, the first employee was appointed and the agricultural department was born.
November 2006
Introduction of AgroSPIN RTK network
In the autumn, the AgroSPIN RTK network was introduced. This network covering the whole of the Netherlands was a veritable revolution because now the whole country could drive using RTK-GPS without a mobile basic station being required. The network sends the correction signal via a mobile network to the tractor and this technology later became the standard for the whole sector.
November 2007
Development of plough steering
The idea originated to steer a Vario plough with GPS. In order to develop this, a former developer from CNH was appointed. Within a few months, he developed a prototype that was tested successfully in practice for the first time in November.
March 2008
First RTK-GPS machine steering
From the market the demand grew for being able to steer machines with RTK-GPS. In collaboration with Trimble a solution was developed whereby both the tractor and the machine were steered. Of course, this increased the precision and the ease of use.
September 2008
First RTK-GPS steered grading box
RTK-GPS can not only be used for driving straight, but also for an accurate height tracking. The FieldLevel RTK levelling system was built up on a demo grading box for extensive testing. Thanks to the successful test and the resulting publicity that year various FieldLevel systems were sold.
January 2009
First seeder with release control and section control
In January, Trimble introduced the FmX display and 2 months later a system for release control and section control. In the spring, the first maize seeder was built with automatic release control, section control and seed monitoring. Revolutionary was the fact that both the Autopilot and the seeder were steered from the same (FMX) display.
July 2010
Creation of Agrometius BV
Meanwhile, the agricultural department of Geometius had grown to 10 employees and was mature enough to continue independently. On 1 July 2010, Agrometius BV became a fact, with Dennis Nijland as managing director. To celebrate this, in the Netherlands and Belgium a demo tour was organized which many visitors attended to test the systems in practice.
August 2010
First drainage machine with RTK-GPS
RTK-steered levelling has meanwhile become a huge success and there is an increasing demand for this technology, as well as the demand to apply this technique to a drainage machine. We took on this challenge and in the summer the first drainage machine was built. It had 2 GPS receivers: one for driving straight and one for the depth control. As a result, levelling in advance was no longer necessary and considerable labour costs were realized.
April 2011
Fertilizer spreader on the basis of Greenseekers
The Trimble FmX display offers extensive possibilities for variable dosing, but there were not yet many customers who applied this in practice. For a project, we were given the opportunity to install a set of Greenseeker crop sensors and to link them with the fertilizer spreader for place-specific dosing. This combination was successfully deployed for additional fertilization of the wheat.