History of the Verti-Drain

Only Verti Drain has the unique & patented "kick" action.

The inventor of the Verti-Drain, Arien DeRidder, came upon the idea originally while attending a local amateur sporting event near his home in Zeist, Holland. A recent rainfall had left standing water on much of the playing field. The groundskeeper proceeded to send men armed with pitchforks onto the field to attack the problem. Multiple groups of men worked their way around the compacted areas using the pitchforks to penetrate a deep layer of compaction thus allowing the standing water to drain. They found that the next day the field was back to a mostly playable condition.
Mr. DeRidder realized that deep compaction was a major problem to all sports turf and he set out to develop the first mechanical pitchfork. “The Verti-Drain” was born in the late 1970s.

Mr. DeRidder took his idea to a boyhood friend, Cees DeBre, the President of a large railroad manufacturing company, (Redexim, bv).  Together they built and sold the aerators around Holland. With the help of an engineer, Josef Reincke, they received a patent for the machine, continued to improve the product and began to set their sites on the rest of the world. Soon knowledge of the Verti-Drain spread throughout all of Northern Europe, North America, Australia and Asia.

In the early 1980’s Redexim partnered with a distributor in the UK, Charterhouse Turf Machinery. “Charterhouse” was also a manufacture of specialized turf equipment such as the “Rapidcore”, “Turf Tidy”, “Easy Spread”, “Overseeder” and “Level Spike” and a few others. They distributed these products through Northern Europe & the UK under the Charterhouse label. (They also distributed this product in North America through the Bunton Company until 1996).

Redexim and Charterhouse merged in the late 1990s to form a worldwide company specialized in Turf Equipment. Redexim Charterhouse has a North American Sales and Marketing Center in Pittston Township, PA and has a full service staff servicing North America.