Another Italian Job #ThrowbackThursday

I received a message with some images over the weekend from one of our good friends “Down Under” asking me if I knew anything about the Italian brand PMI.

The answer was yes, I had heard of them, but didn’t know very much about the company, so I decided to do some investigating work.

Italy has a long and illustrious history of producing hydraulic excavators, and when you delve back into the archives famous names pop out at you like Benati, Bruneri, FAI, Fiat-Allis, Hydromac and Laltesi to name a few.

Many of the smaller brands got gobbled up by larger industrial organisations over the years.

PMI or Padana Macchine Industriali SpA to give it the full handle, was originally founded back in 1973 by a group of earthmoving entrepreneurs and during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s they produced hydraulic excavators from a factory in Carpaneto, Piacenzo.

The 11-model range started with the 8.5-tonne PMI 450 model, and topped out with the PMI 2200 which tipped the scales with an operating weight of 44-tonnes.

By 1988 the company had launched its 800 Series models which consisted of 6 tracked machines from 15 -tonnes up to 34.5 tonnes. Wheeled excavators were also produced with a 3-model range.

The 1990’s brought another upgraded range the 900 Series. There were also collaborations with Daewoo which saw them become distributors for the Korean machines in Italy.

My understanding is that the PMI business is still going today, building bespoke machines for demolition and for port handling but not on the scale they were previously.

Italy is a fascinating place with a lot of construction machinery history, one of these days I promise to take a tour there, and also to catch up with the mighty ACCO dozer, but that’s a story for another day!

Theres not a massive amount of video footage of PMI machines on You Tube, but I did come across this PMI 818 R wheeled excavator, still very capable of a good day's work!