One very famous Harrison travelled the world as Indiana Jones, exploring the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom and later seeking the holy grail in The Last Crusade. Back at Campey HQ, our own Dave Harrison has been on an epic voyage across the Asia-Pacific region with the KORO® Recycling Dresser.
This journey has seen Dave travel to Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea, and he explains how the environmental factors and evolution of the KORO® Recycling Dresser have met at the perfect time for the Asia-Pacific market.
The Recycling Dresser (RCD) was part of the “KORO® Renovation System”, designed by Ko Rodenburg. Working alongside the KORO® FIELD TOPMAKER®, it was introduced to relieve compaction, aerate, and top-dress sand-based sports fields with their own root-zone material.
As well as the obvious agronomic benefits of relieving compaction up to 22cm deep, the RCD helped reduce renovation costs by eliminating the need to buy and apply additional top-dressing material. By implementing these functions into one machine, the benefits were multi-fold: saving time and labour costs, saving fuel, reducing machinery requirements, eliminating the cost of buying, transporting and loading sand, and reducing additional surface compaction by minimising traffic over the sports field surface. A one-pass renovation process, followed up by simply brushing or drag-matting the pitch. Minimal down-time and the pitch is back in play immediately.
The RCD was re-designed to improve contour following, as well as simplifying the mechanics, reducing the size & weight of the machine, thus reducing the size of tractor and the auxiliary services required, The RCD (MK2 range), available in three sizes (1600, 1900 & 2200mm widths) is now well established in the golf course sector worldwide, with the range having particular success in the USA and in Asia – Pacific region. With an abundance of courses having sand-capped fairways and warm season grasses that demand regular top-dressing, the RCD fits the bill perfectly.
Units are already installed at Free Country Club, Rainbow Hills Country Club, Jeju Raon Private Country Club, Tiger Country Club, Maron New Day Country Club, Pine Lees Country Club, Sky 72 Golf Club, Seosansu Country Club and Cheonan Evergreen Country Club to name a few.
This is because the saving in the cost of sand alone makes the RCD a worthwhile investment to many clubs, but taking into consideration the overall cost of top-dressing fairways (cost of sand, top-dressing machine, loading sand, additional staff, etc), the savings are potentially even greater.
There are other agronomic benefits that are often overlooked too. The pre-cut and post-cut roller discs act as surface aerators, slicing the sward to increase shoot density and promoting gaseous exchange. Fertilizers captivated in the upper root zone are also released when spread over the surface and exposed to water & sunlight too. When all these factors come together its perhaps easy to see why the KORO® Recycling Dresser is so popular in this part of the world.
