Alliance Mar 24 (Esco a/w)
Digger Man

Digger Man Blog

by Nick Drew  |  Mon 05 Oct 2020

Ageing British Excavator at work in Denmark

Our Danish friend Lasse Holst has been in touch again to tell us about a video he spotted that features an old British built Hymac hydraulic excavator which is still putting in a shift and earning its keep in Denmark.

Ageing British Excavator at work in Denmark

Poul Hansen Entreprenører A/S is a plant and machinery contractor based in Grinsted, Denmark. The company which was established back in 1960 is involved in the earthmoving, drainage and civil engineering sectors and currently runs a significant fleet of machines dominated by Caterpillar and Komatsu models.

Like many modern-day company’s Poul Hansen still has to odd “old girl” in the fleet and in this instance that machine is a Hymac 201. These machines were developed during the early 1980’s, the period when Hymac were taken over by the German IBH Group and when they were co-operating with Hanomag who were already manufacturing excavators in Germany.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Rowland.

IBH and Hanomag worked closely to develop the 201 which was a brand-new model in the range. However, the IBH Group collapsed with some serious debts in 1983, but all was not lost, as the NEI Group took over the business and became the latest owner of the Hymac brand in 1984.

Production of the 20-tonne class 201 and its long undercarriage sister the 201LC continued. The model didn’t prove to be very popular, and in the end only 52 of them were manufactured during a production run from 1983 to 1987, with 6 of those being face shovel configurations.

So, the machine in Henrik Gandrup’s video is a pretty rare example. It was clearly an export model as it features the black boom and dipper that was so often requested as part of the Scandinavian specification on Hymac’s as well as improved in cab heating, sound proofing and work light packages.

This machine appears to spend its days working at a recycling yard. One would assume she suffers from overheating as the bonnet wings are open, but it looks as if its still more than capable of a days work which is nice to see from a British classic.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Lasse Holst for pointing out this video, and Hymac aficionado Jeremy Rowland for some of the information contained within the post. 

Loads more