NEWS
Biocide gains momentum after F
ollowing its recent launch, new biocide Enclean has made a successful introduction into the amenity sector following positive reports from early adopters, says agronomist Robert Bone, Amenity Specialist with Agrovista. Robert, pictured, who has over 35 years of industry experience, first saw the biocide in its development phase 18 months ago and was impressed with both its speed of action in eradicating algae and its positive effect on dealing with other green deposits that often build up on hard surfaces. “I followed Enclean’s progress across a number of trials during 2019 and although it’s designed primarily to remove algae, trials have consistently shown the biocide’s main active ingredient, Nonanoic acid, also has a secondary effect on breaking down other green deposits that can accumulate on hard surfaces. “Enclean is plant derived, safe to use,
and it has no environmental hazard classification. It’s fast acting and, once applied, it quickly degrades into natural elements leaving behind no harmful residue,” he said. Since the March launch, Robert has been working with his customer base of ground maintenance contractors, county councils and local authorities conducting operator training courses to help them better understand the new biocide, its efficacy and level of control under different operating conditions and on different surfaces such as pavements, the outer surfaces of greenhouses, wooden decking and fence panels. Despite the restrictions on faceto-face meetings due to Covid-19 he believes that Enclean has rapidly gained wide acceptance amongst his clients due to the success of the training courses and product demonstrations. “Application advice is a key part of the agronomic service I provide to
customers and the training courses are a good way of promoting best practice. Although there are a number of established biocides able to deal with algae, Enclean’s very low dilution requirement of 1L of product to 14L of water offering users over 550m2 of coverage is a potential game changer allowing the operator to apply the product using a small knapsack sprayer. “Often, when there is a build up of algae, it occurs in narrow pathways that have limited access to sunlight or wind. Many biocides tend to require large water volumes and that can be a serious problem if the large tank on an ATV or UTV mounted sprayer can’t access the area you need to treat. If you’re working in a relatively remote place, far away from a water source, another potential issue is accessing significant volumes of water to be able to do the job. Using a biocide that requires a relatively small amount of water from a knapsack sprayer can be a major advantage,” he said.