High tec, high spec and high expectations
Laurence Gale MSc looks at the role of the contractor in today’s highly competitive and ever changing marketplace
I
n the last thirty years there has been a huge influx of innovative new machinery and equipment into our industry, from a broad spectrum of suppliers. The range and choice available now is staggering compared to when I started out back in the mid 1970s. Take golf as an example. When I
worked at Cocks Moors Woods Golf Club between 1975 and 1977 we only had four pedestrian mowers - two Ransomes Auto Certes to mow the greens and two Atco mowers for banks and tees. Fairways and rough were cut with Lloyds gang mowers that were towed by one old Ford tractor. We also had the ‘luxury’ of one Pattison spiker for the greens and tees. There were no ride-on triple mowers; unless we were gang mowing, we walked everywhere! Compare that with what you expect to see on a golf course these days. Today, the amount of equipment in the shed is astonishing. Clubs will generally have several greens mowers,
both pedestrian and triple, and often with interchangeable cassette systems, specialist mowers for tees and approaches, semi rough rotary mowers and fairway mowers that look like something out of Star Wars. On top of that, there is now a vast range of specialist machinery available to undertake the most challenging of jobs. The introducition of the Verti- drain deep tine, tractor mounted aerator led the revolution back in the early 1980s and, by the mid 1990s, there was a wealth of new technology and machinery available - laser guided trenching machines, new aeration technology, faster air injection tine machines and deep drill and linear decompaction practices. This prompted the development of sand grooving machines, the Graden scarifier and the development of better seeders, graders and topdressers. However, one of the most formidable developments was the Koro Field Topmaker, a fraise mower which
revolutionised the way sports pitches would be renovated. It was Richard Campey who saw the potential of this machine and introduced it into the UK market.
The success of the Koro also enabled other opportunities to develop. Big roll turf harvesters were soon to follow, along with second and third generation vertidrain type machines from a number of manufacturers. However, the availability of such high end technology comes at a cost, with many of these machines carrying a significant price tag that not every club could afford. Yet, there were a number of people who did invest in this new technology, setting up specialist contracting services offering complete end of season renovation packages, drainage work, new builds and reconstruction services.
By the mid to late 1980s, many of the contracting companies we use today had established themselves in our ever
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