Tag Archive for: Success

SALTEX 2021 a success for Ariens

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SALTEX 2021 a success for Ariens: AriensCo, an industry leader in outdoor power equipment, couldn’t be happier with its participation at this year’s SALTEX. Not only did it showcase its professional petrol and battery powered zero-turn mowers, it also connected with thousands of landscaping professionals and hosted an exclusive Lawn Care Legends booth takeover.

During the two-day event, Ariens met thousands of turf professionals, landscapers and local authority representatives and showed exactly how its fully commercial, heavy-duty line-up can support them at every stage of lawn care. From young, fledgling entrepreneurs to established businesses, Ariens was able to identify their needs and find the right mower and tools to get the job done.

SALTEX 2021 a success for Ariens

SALTEX 2021 a success for Ariens

Products on display included its upgraded ZENITH, an industry leading, fully commercial zero-turn with enhanced operator comfort options and rear discharge deck. Excitingly, the battery-operated ZENITH E was also on show, along with a concept stand-on mower, ARROW.

Additionally, Ariens’ also exhibited its powerful and precise APEX zero-turn as well as its IKON XD zero-turn, loaded with commercial-style features. Meeting the needs of its UK and European customer base, the APEX and ZENITH models now come with rear discharge deck options, while all Ariens petrol powered zero-turns are manufactured at its factory in Oxfordshire.

In an Ariens first, its stand was also taken over by the Lawn Care Legends, a community of aspiring and professional landscapers. More than 80 Legends came to see and hear about the star of the show, the ZENITH E and the rest of the Ariens line-up and left giving positive feedback.

Brad Stiles, Sales and Marketing Director, EMEAA said, “This year’s Saltex was hugely successful for us. Not only did we get to hear from some of the industry’s finest and get taken over by the famous Lawn Care Legends but reaction to our heavy duty, commercial line-up was truly fantastic. Our low noise, low emission ZENITH E was also a smash hit, so we know it’ll be driving change for years to come.”

To find out more about Ariens’ commercial line-up of battery and petrol powered zero-turn mowers visit ariens.eu. If you’d like to join the growing network of Ariens dealers, email: mwilson@ariensco.com

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GroundWOW® gearing up for success

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GroundWOW® gearing up for success: North-West autonomous technology innovators, GroundWOW, have been gearing up for success aided by the gradual opening-up of sport around the globe.

“There has definitely been a discernible change over the past three or four months. We developed so much through the pandemic itself and since then, it feels like target clients have really switched on to getting back to their business. For us, that has meant being busier than ever with product demonstrations at our HQ near Manchester or at client sites” commented Chief Commercial Officer, David Pritchard.

GroundWOW® gearing up for success

GroundWOW® gearing up for success

“The willing embrace of the likes of Zoom and MS Teams through the pandemic allowed us to remote in contacts from all over the world who have been clambering to see what we are up to. Truth is, we can entertain anybody either virtually or in person, and the real magic moment is when a target customer is able to view their logo being printed live from the viewing platform directly above our indoor test track. For lots of customers, that is when the penny really drops” continued Pritchard.

Outside of events and demonstrations, the team behind the world’s first autonomous full colour ground printer has been eyeing up new premises as the expansion of their enterprise continues.

“We knew when we moved to our current address that we would outgrow it quite quickly and that is exactly how things have played out. The team has grown enormously. If we look back to Saltex 2019, there were probably eight or ten of us, but we are already approaching thirty employees with a plan to double that inside the next twelve months. We design and develop here, we manufacture here, we test and demonstrate here, all of our future pipeline comes from here…and that all brings with it a requirement for more space”.

GroundWOW are also entering an active schedule of exhibition and conference events as part of further revealing their technology to the world of sport. GroundWOW attended Leaders Week at Twickenham in October and as well as Saltex in November, will attend and present at Stadium Business Summit at Emirates Old Trafford in December. “It’s all part of what we consider the missionary work – taking a new technology to an expectant market and walking through how it works in such a breadth of use-cases” added Pritchard.

“Internationally, we have been hamstrung like everybody else by the inability to travel and so we are thrilled to finally be planning trips to the Middle East, South Africa, the U.S, Australia and New Zealand. We will certainly be racking up the air miles as we undertake the next phase task of establishing operational bases in these target territories. Beyond sport, our autonomous technology has found application in healthcare and other sectors creating significant hyper growth opportunities. You could definitely say it is a busy time for us at GroundWOW!”.

Launched in October 2019, GroundWOW® was developed with a founding mission to make printing on ground as easy as printing on paper. GroundWOW® SPECIAL FX can print any logo, any size, on any surface. Deployable in under 10 mins, autonomous technology, A.I and an end-to-end Cloud platform combine to create images as accurate as a blade of grass.

GroundWOW and GroundWOW Special FX are trademarks. GroundWOW is a trading name of Micropply Limited.

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Reesink ‘tee up’ success

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Reesink ‘tee up’ success: Reesink Turfcare’s ReeAssure Maintenance Scheme has provided a number of invaluable benefits for Falkirk Golf Club in Scotland, which had its fingers burnt by a previous service provider.

Dougie Melville, course manager at Falkirk Golf Club, comments: “We had been let down by our previous provider, having been subjected to fluctuating bills and travel charges for call outs. In 2016 we chose not to renew our lease and called in Reesink, who provided a full-blown assessment of our fleet.

Reesink 'tee up' success

Reesink ‘tee up’ success

“They meticulously went through what each machine needed, when, and how much it would cost. We took this to the committee who signed it off and since then we’ve had faultless service from Reesink.

“From giving machines their winter overhaul to replacing parts, repairing breakdowns and sharpening units, it’s all taken care of under one cost – hassle free!”

As a club with 27 holes to maintain (an 18-hole and 9-hole Antonine Course) and some challenging wet weather to negotiate, there’s no time for any of the club’s nine machines to go down. They all play a very necessary role in maintaining the grounds, particularly as the Antonine course is on the site of an old Roman fort and the Carron River used to run through the area.

“It actually saves us money,” adds Dougie. “In properly understanding our site and the conditions our grounds team are faced with, Reesink knows how to get the best performance out of our mowers and vehicles. We schedule two in-season services for every machine and as a result they don’t require much upkeep or many new parts, which has actually lowered our costs.”

Five years on Falkirk Golf Club remains on Reesink’s Gold plan which covers a wide spectrum of maintenance and upkeep options, with services, new parts and labour all included. Silver and Bronze packages are also available, providing a robust level of cover for all budgets.

It’s not just the financial and maintenance aspects of the plan which suit Falkirk Golf Course so well, as Dougie continues: “We have a brilliant relationship with Rab at Reesink’s Livingston branch. If he can’t deal with it straight away, I know I’ll have someone on site the very next day. The mechanics are all very knowledgeable and efficient. I can’t fault anyone in the team!”

Rab Wilson, from Reesink in Livingston, Scotland, comments: “We are often called out to help organisations who have had their fingers burnt elsewhere and, as a business that focuses on quality, Reesink offers the reassurance that goes with having a comprehensive maintenance plan. It makes a difference to customers like Dougie who want to focus on perfecting the pristine standards of the club.

Call 01480 226800 or go online at reesinkturfcare.co.uk to find out more.

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Bunkers ensure success at Marco Simone course

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Bunkers ensure success at Marco Simone course: Although the Covid-19 pandemic means it will have to wait another year until it hosts the Ryder Cup, preparation of the Marco Simone course in Rome continue apace.

All eighteen holes of the new-look course, designed by European Golf Design, opened for member and guest play earlier this month. And Dave Sampson, of European Golf Design, says the course’s bunkers, which have been built using the Capillary Bunkers lining system, are performing particularly well.

Bunkers ensure success at Marco Simone course

Bunkers ensure success at Marco Simone course

“The first nine holes – actually the back nine of the course – started construction in August 2018, and were all grassed by the end of summer 2019,” says Sampson. “A couple of major storm events set those holes back a little, but they were all in play last summer. The second phase construction started in autumn 2019 and finished during summer 2020. Phase three, the practice greens, is currently being finished, though architect Sampson, prevented from visiting the site by the pandemic, has been approving the works via drone footage. The course is planned to make its public bow this September when it plays host to the European Tour’s Italian Open.

Sampson says: “We have been in daily contact with the guys from contractor SOL Golf who have been on site, so finishing the final greens remotely has been OK. Nothing of the original course has been retained – every hole except for the sixth plays in a new corridor.”

He adds that the choice of Capillary Bunkers as a liner was an easy one. “I have had really good success with Capillary on previous projects, including the Evian resort in France and Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland,” he explains. “Evian and Marco Simone have quite a lot in common, in terms of weather patterns, so it was a pretty good model. The amount of maintenance time post storms is minimal compared to what it was before.”

Designing a course for a Ryder Cup is rather different to building a normal course, Sampson says: “On a normal project, you’d be looking for the best eighteen holes, pure and simple. Here, you’re looking for the best eighteen holes that can deal with 50,000 spectators. So the routing is quite challenging, but that said, there are not long walks between greens and tees. This is a 27-hole project, so the extra nine gives us space for the range, the spectator village and the like. And you need to build the course to be extra resilient in terms of weather – there isn’t a lot of extra daylight to play with given the time of year a Ryder Cup is played, so the course needs to be playable quickly even in the event of severe weather. That’s one of the benefits of using a liner like Capillary Bunkers.”

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GGM Group celebrate charity success

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GGM Group celebrate charity success: A Lancashire based business is ending the year on a high and celebrating raising over £10,000 for charity over the past two years – despite the restrictions caused by the global pandemic.

Colne-based GGM Group selected three charities to support, pledging to raise over £10k through an intensive programme of activity. After a great start in 2019, the business was determined not to be hampered by lockdown restrictions in 2020 and came up with their own ingenious ways to fundraise.

GGM Group celebrate charity success

GGM Group celebrate charity success

The businesses annual charity walking event was rethought with MD Chris Gibson travelling from his home town of Lancaster to the businesses’ head office in Colne and then back again covering a distance of 104 miles –  through a combination of cycling and walking. He was joined at different points on his journey by different members of staff undertaking different legs in pairs, to enable social distancing.

The business has thought further outside of the box in it’s fundraising efforts with a team of staff pledging to lose weight in aid of charity.

The fundraising has raised money for charities who are finding themselves cash-strapped during these difficult times. Greenfingers is the company charity for the second year running,  dedicated to supporting children who spend time in hospices around the UK, along with their families, by creating inspiring gardens for them to relax in. In addition, funds have also been raised for St John’s Hospice in Lancaster and Pendleside Hospice in Burnley.

Chris Gibson explains more:

“It’s a key part of our ethos at The GGM Group to give something back to the community and we are delighted to have been able to achieve our charity target, despite these difficult times. Now, more than ever, charities need our support and we are delighted to have still been able to help”.

The GGM Group has worked hard to find ways to keep the business operating this year, and  throughout the pandemic has worked hard to keep the whole team together, maintain its commitment to excellent customer service, and, where it was safe to do so, keep machines operational for professional and domestic customers throughout the season.

The company has also started recruiting again and are aiming to help some of the younger members of the local community with apprenticeship opportunities.

In addition, the business made a pledge during lockdown to become an eco-friendly organisation and strive to improve its green credentials even further, through a range of initiatives including electric vehicles, a wildlife wellbeing oasis at the Haydock branch and the recent installation of solar panels.

The GGM Group consists of two businesses across two depots. PSD Groundscare is the national distributor of specialist landscaping equipment, including AS Motor and Eliet, Koppl and TS Industrie. GGM Groundscare is a specialist supplier of tractors and high-quality professional land-based equipment for commercial and domestic use. Servicing the North West and Yorkshire, it supplies a range of products from leading franchises including Kubota, Baroness and Amazone.

Chris Gibson concluded:

“There is no dispute that this has been an incredibly challenging year for most businesses. I’m incredibly proud of how our team has pulled together and hitting our charity target really is the icing on the cake. Like most people, we can finally see light at the end of the tunnel and I’m confident of a bright 2021.

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