Nigel Love and Vanessa Roche own over 360 hectares at Pemberton in Southwest Western Australia. Their farm covers about 150 hectares of avocados, with the remaining land used for grazing beef cattle.

Mr Love and Ms Roche are second generation farmers who started their journey growing 30 hectares of potatoes on the original family farm at the time it was only 80 hectares.

In about 2003 the couple embarked on to their first avocado planting and today supply their quality avocado fruit to major supermarket chains in Australia.

Over the years they have been familiar with the GreenTech Spray Systems from many neighbouring farms and orchards that have purchased this brand for use in this fertile part of Western Australia.

Mr Love said he borrowed and used one of the very tall GreenTech tree spray systems from one of the neighbours which made him more familiar with the machine.

He said the GreenTech machine is highly regarded in the orchard industry and both he and many others find the machine to be the best on the market. “We must spray the trees to achieve the best quality fruit in order to sell them at the best prices, so we have to have the best technology to achieve these results,” Mr Love said.

He says if they cannot spray properly, they may as well not do it at all, as he will lose tractor time, diesel fuel, chemicals and labour - with the end result being lost money.

In 2021, following a review of spray technology options and talking further with some neighbouring orchard owners about crop protection application technology, one of the first items on their agenda was to examine what equipment best suited their commercial and business needs.

Eventually, they found that the GreenTech spray system ‘stood out from the crowd’, saying it was different in design, operation and the way it applies fungicides, pesticides and foliar nutrition to tall and midsized avocado trees.

Their farm has trees that are just planted and older trees which are very tall – about 7.5m to 8m in height

“The GreenTech spray system is virtually specifically assembled/made for our application, producing outstanding high-volume air velocity,” Mr Love said.

“In-cab adjustments can also be made to the fan spray heads positioning in precise fan angles for tree architecture, affording exceptional coverage.”

Mr Love said the flexibility of fan positioning on the unit, as well as being able to isolate fans individually to target specific applications was just one of the system’s great assets.

“One of the extraordinary strengths of the GreenTech product is that it produces the right droplets for obtaining the best spray coverage with excellent cost savings and reliability,” he said.

The family decided to look more closely at this machine with the view to change their spraying practice to more accurate low volume high-quality spraying of their valuable avocado trees. Currently they apply between 150 L/ha to 300L/ha with the GreenTech.

Benz Baek, managing director of GreenTech International said the GreenTech brand offers a uniquely designed spray system with low-power consumption.

“GreenTech has grown to be a significant business after starting out very small in South Australia. The company has now exported spray systems to New Zealand, USA and even South America,” he said.

Mr Baek said the key to GreenTech technology is its low power consumption industrial-grade electrical driven fan spray head technology (see image above).

“GreenTech technology is renowned for its simplicity, and the reliable robust design of our sprayers meets high standards for Australian conditions. Today the technology has established itself as a spray system of choice in tank capacities from 2000L to 6000L,” he said.

Mr Love and Ms Roche say in their view the GreenTech tree spray system has exceeded their expectations with the precise droplets and coverage and all required adjustments.

“We had a good working relationship with Benz Baek in pointing out what features of the machine we wanted to incorporate on our specific model,” Mr Love said.

“Benz was very willing to make the GreenTech machine to accommodate our needs with the fitting of a chemical transfer venturi, and also the ability to change and adjust the very top fan spray heads downward over the top of the tree canopy to push droplets down from the top parts of the canopy and further down into the centre of the tree to ensure outstanding coverage in all parts of the canopy.”

Mr Love said with their avocados trees being of varying heights and ages that the GreenTech machine is very versatile in adapting their spray application programs in their particular orchard.

“With agriculture becoming more challenging and never really being immune to challenges, we always need to look at ways of making farming more efficient by acquiring the best technology,” he said.