The Surrey based businesses operate within a 60 mile radius of their headquarters in Ellens Green and specialise in local government urban and rural grass contracts as well as work for customer groups such as private sports clubs, commercial facilities and Parish Councils.

Such is the magnitude of their client base that they are currently running six teams of maintenance staff and covering over five and a half million square metres of grass and amenity grounds per month - seven times per year!

Managing Director, Richard Conway said, “We are running  some very large contracts serving  county councils including Hampshire and West Sussex, and other projects throughout Kent, Surrey and beyond. We cover a very large area and have dedicated professional teams that need commercial quality professional equipment to reduce the down time.”

Over the years, Grasstex has used a wide range of products and brands of equipment, some good, some bad, some indifferent. “We’ve got to know the benefits and advantages of many of the brands of products on the market,” commented Richard. “some of the leading brands are not as good as you would think and from our experience  in terms of performance, reliability and value-for-money, John Deere tractors and professional turf equipment are way ahead of their competition and the best mowers out there are Trimax. - that’s why we decided to invest in them.”

Grasstex has recently taken delivery of eight new Trimax Fx155 and two Fx165 flail mowers to fit to their John Deere front mounted mower units and, a set of Trimax Pegasus S4 wide area mowers. “With all the hard work we put these machines through,” added Richard “they have proven to be the absolute best performers out there and we need reliability to maintain the large quantity of urban grass and amenity areas too tight contract programs . We maintain most of the equipment ourselves and apart from replacing flails and belts, there’s not much else we need to do.”

Grasstex and Active Grounds Maintenance buy all their John Deere and Trimax equipment through Burden Bros Agri, their local dealer. “Burden Bros Agri have always provided us with excellent parts back-up and after-sales service when we have needed it,” said Richard, “their local salesman, Oli Gerrish has been very helpful and is always making sure that everything is going well for us. We also run two larger John Deere tractors for the heavier work a John Deere 6130R and a 6125R, both on turf tyres. The drivers love them because they are very comfortable for their long work hours. Despite all the large areas of grass we maintain, we usually trade-out our mowers after about three years - which means we get a great return on our investment, with minimal downtime. That’s a management decision that is based on our long-term experience and it just shows that it pays to invest in the best.” he concluded.