Topcon Wins Huge Tender Romania

The Romanian Agency of Payments and Interventions in Agriculture ( APIA ) has acquired 530 units of Topcon Europe Positioning's GMS-2 units from the Topcon Czech exclusive distributor GEODIS BRNO and its Romanian daughter company GEODIS RO.

This makes it the largest sale of Topcon's hand held mobile GPS-receiver, not only in Romania, but also Europe-wide. More than 40 local offices of the APIA organisation received training in the use of the GMS-2.

"530 Units is a large number, even if you take into account that already more than 1.2 million Romanian farmers submitted requests for EU-subsidies for their farmland since the beginning of 2007. The units will undoubtedly be used to their maximum", says Stefan Naumann, GIS product marketing manager.

According to EU regulations eligible Romanian farmers can obtain subsidies of 50 euros per hectare of land in addition to 30 euros per hectare from the Romanian state budget. For the management of distribution of these European Community Funds the Agency of Payments and Interventions in Agriculture has been installed. The amounts of hectares the farmer actually owns will naturally have to be checked.

"The Romanian government launched both administrative simultaneous checks and spot checks in the field to verify what the farmer has applied for. Using Topcon's GMS-2, this large scale task should be easily accomplished", Naumann continues.