Thanks to a new partnership with UK company Klou, attachment specialist Forest Centre offers a broader range of solutions for excavators – especially grapples.
Reymund Kell, Director at Forest Centre in Tumut, NSW, is a very knowledgeable bloke when it comes to heavy machinery and its specific uses. He’s always enthusiastic whenever he’s speaking to The Australian Arbor Age, and he seems especially keen on the details behind choosing the right grapple or grapple saw for a contractor’s needs.
Lately Rey’s been directing his attention to the smaller excavators and skid steers often encountered on a tree-work site, and when we caught up with him recently we weren’t all that surprised to learn Forest Centre had added another arrow to the quiver.
“As we’re working more frequently with arborists,” enthused Rey, “we’ll be concentrating on the excavator grapples manufactured by Klou – grapples for small excavators.”
‘Klou?’ we wondered. ‘Wasn’t that company started by Cutters?’
Robust and efficient hydraulic attachments
Cutters, Klou’s parent company, kicked off in the UK in 1999 as distributors of landscape and forestry equipment in South Africa. Originally, Cutters provided garden and arborist equipment sales and servicing across the UK’s south. But by 2010 Cutters had expanded into the manufacture of hydraulic attachments.
In 2014, the decision was made to concentrate solely on the attachment side of the business under the brand name of Klou – which rhymes with ‘plough’, by the way.
Since then Klou has grown into a global business which supplies customers in the Americas, Australasia, Africa and across Europe with highquality hydraulic attachments manufactured in Dorset, UK.
The company’s catchcry is ‘brutally effective’, and in the world of excavator attachments, it’s probably a good one.
KXG-10 grapple
Klou’s KXG-10 is built tough for the professional operator and optimised for the popular two-tonne to five-tonne class of excavators, both with and without rotation.
The attachment is designed and built to handle almost anything, including:
• Timber
• Brash
• Stone and concrete
• Posts and pipes
• Scrap, and
• Refuse.
Klou claims the KGX-10, being made of Hardox® and Strenx®, is ‘practically indestructible’. It says the grapple can work fast thanks to optimised geometry, can rip out fences, roots and vegetation, and offers precise operation when configured with a rigid mounting.
The KGX-10 is backed by a three-year warranty, which says a lot for Klou’s faith in its equipment.
New model on the way
Rey Kell was understandably rapt to have Forest Centre offering machinery of such high quality, but he was just as excited at the pending release of a new Klou grapple for five-tonne to eight-tonne machines.
“Our primary focus remains with purpose-built tree- and timber-handling attachments for larger machines,” he explained, ‘though it’ll be great to offer some complementary solutions for the smaller excavators many arb businesses run, too.”
Keep an eye on forestcentre.com.au for updates on availability and for information on first-class tree-handling machinery in general.
