A SALFORD Priors company is helping a worldwide campaign to clear landmines.

Bomford Turner, which manufactures agricultural machinery, is helping landmine removal charity the HALO Trust by supplying special eight-metre flail arms which can be fitted to armoured tractors to cut vegetation around the mines.

The tractors are sent to the company and then fitted with the special arms, which enables vegetation to be cut further away from the mine than it could be manually.

Two machines have just been fitted with the arms, which are either fixed to the machine using axle brackets or attached on to the back of the vehicle. These have now been sent back to the trust, which has helped to clear landmines in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Angola and Eritrea and has removed more than a million so far.

The charity has said the most successful area of mechanical mine clearance involves the adaptation of existing agricultural and civil engineering machines.

HALO's South East Asia desk officer Simon Conway, said: "We have 11 Bomford Turner flail arms in Cambodia. Modified agricultural tractors with the cutting arms are deployed in Cambodia, Eritrea, Angola and Mozambique.

"The alternative to the flail arms is for individual de-miners to use loppers and shears to remove vegetation before they can then use mine detectors on the surface of the ground; this represents a significant waste of time and poses a greater threat to the de-miner from trip-wire operated mines.

"We believe that in thick vegetation the deployment of flail arms has increased the efficiency of manual de-mining by as much as 70 per cent."

Bomford Turner marketing manager Mike Skerrett said: "These machines are normally designed to cut hedges and verges but the flail arm enables mine-detecting teams to cut the vegetation around the mine from further away.

"Should a mine go off, the arm acts as a shock absorber, and the cutting head fitted on the end can cut through very dense vegetation."