Manufacturers are well aware that they need to sell themselves as a company as much as they do the products themselves and the shift away from shows towards bringing the customer to the product has added some impetus with Massey Ferguson opening a new visitor centre at Beauvais.

Known as the Massey Ferguson Agrispace, this new 2,800m² customer experience centre is located at the heart of the Massey Ferguson campus in Beauvais, France, reinforcing its position as the home of Massey Ferguson.

Such sentiments may unsettle Massey Ferguson purists who still believe in Banner Lane as being the true cradle of the company but Thierry Lhotte, vice-president and managing director of Massey Ferguson Europe & Middle East, insists that Agrispace is "much more than a showroom or a museum".

This new hospitality destination is said to offer Massey Ferguson customers, dealers, business partners, students and employees a wide range of meeting rooms, an auditorium, product and services exhibits, a merchandise shop and a restaurant.

There is also a museum which will be open in April, depicting the brand’s '175 years of Born to Farm' experience.

The centre will also be made available to the public with the goal to make farming and farm machinery accessible to a wider audience and underline the positive impact the company has on agriculture and on local communities.

For the time being the Agrispace and factory tours will only be accessible to groups of farmers organized by their local Massey Ferguson dealer. This will be opened up to the public in general as the facility becomes operational from June onwards.

The centre is well placed to receive visitors, being just ten minutes from Beauvais airport.