Based on Sydney’s northern beaches, ProGarden made the commitment to battery power nearly a decade ago. The change to Kress equipment has been a big and positive one.
The beaches in Sydney’s north are a far cry from the urban inner city, and property owners in the area tend to be proud of the location and the homes within it.
Accepting responsibility for the care of gardens and grounds in the area is no small undertaking.
Lachlan Maple, founder and owner of ProGarden, seems entirely comfortable with maintaining some of the most well-groomed residences and properties in the state.
Lachlan has formal qualifications in horticulture and completed his Certificate 3 in Landscape Construction. He won the Outstanding Student Award from TAFE NSW and most Outstanding Achievement Award from Landscape NSW and ACT.
He’s a happy sort of bloke to speak to, has a great deal of experience in both his profession and with battery-powered OPE especially, and the change to 100% most Kress equipment for his company meant a substantial financial commitment.
As far as Lachlan is concerned, the advantages of using Kress equipment have well and truly justified the investment.
The usual
“We do a lot of hedge trimming, lawns, a bit of tree trimming…we do everything,” the cheerful company director told Landscape Contractor magazine.
“It’s the whole garden-maintenance thing.”
“We started using Kress in probably October or November last year (2023),” he said, thoughtfully. “It’s been a bit over 12 months. I got some of the first gear that was in the country. Pittwater Mowers in Manly showed me the Kress equipment before it was even available here. They loaned me some demo gear and I was pretty much sold on it from then.”
Lachlan had embraced battery power in around 2016. The equipment he started with was okay at the time, but battery life wasn’t so great, and there seemed to be a lot of warranty claims.
“We were running a generator to charge the batteries, and that was annoying,” he recalled. “It defeats the purpose if you have to run a petrol generator to charge a battery.”
ProGarden jumped into a full suite of Kress gear, and Lachlan hasn’t looked back.
“We’ve got a couple of mowers, three whipper-snippers, the backpack blower and hand-held blower, and we’ve got all the batteries. We’ve got three of the briefcase batteries and three of the other batteries,” he ticked off the list, all of which run off the CyberTank bolted to the ProGarden truck.
“It’s working for us,” he said, clearly pleased. “I was forever charging batteries with the old gear, but with the Kress system I just charge the battery overnight and it works all day. Some jobs you can get two days out of the one battery charge.”
Lachlan also cites the five-year warranty on skins and eight-year warranty on the battery as a big step forward. “We haven’t had too many problems,” he said.
“We’ve had a few little things, but Kress fixed them pretty quickly.”
A good decision
“We’ve got pretty much every tool Kress offers,” Lachlan continued to list the skins. “We’ve got the pole pruner, and we’ve got a fair few commercial jobs where the backpack blower’s good. I’ve got the bigger white battery on that one, and it’s good on the industrial units with the big driveways. We can do them in an hour on one battery, pretty much. Before we were probably going through two or three batteries on some of the other equipment.
“There’s a quick charge time on the batteries, too. That keeps everyone working.”
To learn more of Kress Commercial battery-powered equipment, log on to kress.com.
