Upon earning an Engineer degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Helmut Fandrich set to work with his brother Fred, a helicopter pilot, to design a machine that would use a helicopter to pick cones off trees during the bumper crop of 1979. The first Fandrich Branch Collector was premiered for commercial use in the summer of 1979, and Fandrich Cone Harvesters Ltd. was formed on January 9, 1981.

Since then, numerous aerial cone collecting machines, including the Fandrich Shear (1984) and the Fandrich Powerrake (1993), have been added to the Fandrich Cone Harvesters collection. The Fandrich grapple was released in 1998, and the Fandrich Desailer was released in 2000.

Dr. Fandrich also holds disc brake patents that are being used by Kobelt Manufacturing and automatic lubrication patents that are being used by Electroluber.

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