Neil from Messick's here. If you know us here locally at all, you'll know that the foundations of our company have always been based in agriculture, specifically in hay equipment with New Holland Ag. Because of that, we sell a lot of baler twine to those customers. Enough baler twine to run a single filament of twine the entire way around the globe, two and a half times every year. It is a lot of baler twine. We're going to take a minute today to show you some of the different products that we stock, maybe teach you a little bit about the baler twine industry.
There are two main types of baler twine, either sisal or poly. I'm sitting here on a skid of sisal twine right now. Sisal is actually made from the agave plant. They take the plant and break it down and extract the fibers from it and weave it into this twine. Poly twine is sold in two different types, a treated or an untreated type. Typically, we sell mostly treated. The treated twine is to prevent from rodents and mold and those kinds of things. There is an untreated available too, and that's usually sold to guys that are putting it into a round baler. They're then going to wrap it with plastic because the chemicals in here can eat their way through the plastic slowly.
When you look at sisal twine, you look at the side of the bale, it will tell you the length, it's printed on here. Unlike poly twine, they generally don't put knot strengths on here. Now, there is a knot strength for sisal twine, but because of its natural product, it's a little bit more inconsistent, so it's not marketed as heavily. Typically around 130 or 170 knot strength. What knot strength is, is when you tie a knot in this, it's how many pounds you can put on this strand before it potentially could break. If you're using heavier, wetter bales or bigger, heavier bales than a big baler, you're going to need heavier knot-strength twine in order to support that bale and hold it together.
A vast majority of the twine that's sold today is a polyplastic product. There's two specifications you're going to see on poly twines. It's going to be either the length and the knot strength. The knot strength is going to tell you, if you put a knot in there, how many pounds you're going to pull on that until the knot is apt to break. Twine is available anywhere from about 130-knot strength for small square balers and those kinds of things, up to about 650 pounds where it's a near rope coming out of that bale of twine for things like really heavy big bales and those kinds of things and anywhere in between.
There's a trade-off there. The heavier knot strength you get, typically the thicker the twine is and therefore less of it in a bale. If you're going to be out doing a lot of bales, you're going to be changing more often by running that thicker, heavier twine, but you're a lot less apt in order to have the bale bust open out in the middle of the field, costing you time to clean it up, product that you could be selling, and a lot of headaches in order to get things cleaned up again. Twine is one of those things that people are going to have the impression that they're all the same and to a point that is actually kind of true.
There are only a handful of mills out there that produce baler twines, and they're sold and labeled under a lot of different names. That said, though, we can make some generalizations based on country of origin. Bridon is a major manufacturer that we sell a lot of, and their products are all actually made in the US, and it is specified and rated a little bit differently than what a lot of import twines are. Bridon product is rated in minimums, where most of the rest of the industry is rated in averages. If you buy a bale of 440-knot strength, 4,000 feet long, Bridon product is going to be rated at that minimum. You're never going to drop below that as it's feeding through your baler.
On the flip side, though, imported products are typically rated averages. At some point in that bale, you might get a knot strength that comes out a little bit weaker, or you're going to find of your eight bales on the side of your baler, one of them is going to come up a little bit shorter than the rest are, causing you to throw it all away. Domestically made product with that more conservative rating is a little bit more expensive than what the imports are, but for some guys, that added consistency is worth the money. Outside of US-made Bridon twine, the rest of the products that you're going to see are imported from overseas somewhere.
Most of the quality twines come in from Portugal, like this big stack of Field Ready that I'm sitting on top of here. We do see some come in from Asian countries as well. While we've seen some experimentation with those, we see a lot of inconsistency in those products, so at this point we're not selling anything coming in from Asian markets. You're going to notice twine sold in a lot of different colors. You see I've got a blue bale and an orange bale here. The colors don't denote anything. Simply, sometimes we'll have customers prefer a different color for different labeling uses.
Some guys might choose to run one color for first cut and one color for second cut in order to identify what hay was done when, or run different colors for different customers, or to identify their production in some fashion. It doesn't denote anything. It's simply a labeling flexibility for you. A lot of guys who are running round bales have switched away from twine and towards nets and wraps now at this point. It's a little bit hard to give so much information about nets and wraps like we can about twine. There's not quite so much to share.
There really is one premium provider of products, and that's Tamo Net in this business. If you buy nets labeled by major OEMs, most of the time they are Tamo Net product with somebody else's name on the side, but Tamo Net is the OEM. They're the premium provider in the net wrap space. When you're buying other net wraps, oftentimes what you're giving up is consistency for the most part. You may need a few more wraps around the bale or find some thin spots and that kind of stuff in other off-brands that aren't as premium of a product as what Tamo Net is. That's the brand that we typically recommend for guys who are looking for a consistent and reliable product.
Nets are sold in two different widths. For guys who are running balers that have over the edge net, if you have a 48-inch bale, typically you're going to buy a 51-inch net so those nets come over the edge of your bale. If you have an older baler that doesn't go over the sides or you bought a more narrow model, typically you're going to buy your nets based on the width of your bale chamber. Nets are another thing that we absolutely have in stock as well, as well as silage wraps and those kinds of things where we'd say much the same thing. You've got a couple of premium products out there that are going to give you consistency and strength and the less expensive things, you're just rolling the dice a little bit more.
With wraps in particular, there is a lot of variability that we hear from customers and things like humidity and the machinery that you're using. Generally, our recommendation is that if you found a good wrap that works for you, stick with it. Don't be hopping brands from year to year because we see guys just have to learn how to tune and make their equipment work properly again when they're switching brands specifically with plastic wrap. That's a little bit about baler twines. We have large baler twine customers up and down the East Coast.
If we're able to help you save a couple of bucks on a bale, it can add to your bottom line. That's really what our goal is. If you're not profitable, we're not either. If you have any needs for products like Field Ready or New Holland or Krone Twine or Balecord or Sunfilm or Taian Wraps or Winne or Brazilian Gold, it goes on and on. There's a lot of companies in this space that we sell and broker product for. Give us a call if we're able to help, 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
