Kinze Manufacturing, Inc.
Kinze Manufacturing, Inc. is an American company that makes farming equipment, including row crop planters, grain carts, and tillage tools. It began in 1965 as Kinze Welding, a small welding and repair shop in Ladora, Iowa, founded by Jon Kinzenbaw. The business grew quickly through custom fabrication for farmers and gained recognition in 1968 after re-powering John Deere 5020 tractors with Detroit Diesel engines.
In 1976, Kinze moved to Williamsburg, Iowa, to expand its production. Today, Kinze is a leading producer of planters, grain carts, and tillage equipment for customers in the United States and parts of Europe. To better serve Central and Eastern Europe and free space at the Iowa plant for North American production, Kinze opened a production facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2013.
Key milestones include:
- 1975: Introduced a 24-row rear-folding planter for easy field-to-field transport.
- 2004: Launched a giant 36-row, 30-inch planter capable of planting up to 1,000 acres per day.
- 1990s–2000s: Innovations such as the brush meter for precise singulation (1990) and the EdgeVac vacuum meter (2005).
- 2013: First electric-drive planter (front-fold model 4900) and new 4000-Series row units.
- 2014: Debuted the 4900 Multi-Hybrid planter.
- 2019: Introduced the Blue Vantage planter display and Blue Drive electric system.
- 2021: Rolled out the True Speed high-speed meter for faster planting.
Kinze has also expanded into high-speed tillage with Mach Till disks (2018) and continues to innovate in planter technology and precision farming.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:34 (CET).