With more than 50 years of experience in design and manufacture, the French company Kirogn offers the largest range of circular saw attachments for hedge cutting and tree pruning.

Distributed throughout Australia by Ausvine Machinery, Kirogn offers pruning solutions for ornamental hedges through to tree crops and forestry applications.

Ausvine Machinery’s Dennis Hutton says the modular cutting elements – the LEM and Mini LEM, allow the easy addition of extra blade units.

The LEM has saw blades ranging from 600mm to 900mm in diameter and a cutting length of up to 3580mm. The smaller Mini LEM has 500mm diameter circular saws or flail blades and a cutting length of up to 3000mm.

“Kirogn cutting elements can be adapted to mounting frame styles ranging from Euro hitch for front end loaders and telehandlers, to tractor or trailer mounting. “Custom designs are available, so we can supply growers with the right pruning solution,” Mr Hutton said.

Ausvine Machinery recently delivered the Kirogn Double LEM to Tou's Garden – a Darwin-based Australian mango grower which has been supplying fruit to domestic and international markets for over 26 years.

Mounted to a Massey Ferguson 7038 Agri Telehandler, supplied by Farmworld at Humpty Doo, this machine is equipped with two LEM cutting elements each comprising five 700mm saw blades which allow the pruning on two tree faces in a single pass.

Ian Quinn, company chairman says the reason they bought their own hedger was to have greater control over the timing of our operation. “As an ex-wheat farmer at Hayden I can assure control over timing is as critical there as it is up here for mango farming.

“On paper budgeting, we are better off with a contractor but controlling the timing is not always optimum and you cannot put a price on that convenience.”

Once pruning is complete and the pruning head is removed, the telehandler is utilised for other tasks throughout the year, bringing further savings in capital costs.”

Tou’s Garden began humbly in 1993 on a rundown mango farm at Howard Springs to assist with the management of mango plantations in Howard Springs, Berry Springs and the new development at Acacia Gap. The current plantings consist of 35,000 trees.

Using a specialised dealer network, Ausvine Machinery has supplied equipment into a large variety of tree crop applications, including mangos, cherries, berries, olives, nuts, coffee and native seed tree.

Each application requires a unique solution, to meet the grower requirements. Mr Hutton said the versatility of the Kirogn equipment meets these challenges, providing equipment that can cut all faces of the tree.

The range provides large-scale, telehandler models cutting on two faces in a single pass, down to narrow track mounted units for ornamental hedges.