“Bonny Diggers”

I came across another interesting topic recently over on the superb French forum Technique TP where industry legend Hervé Exca was posting about another Chinese brand of excavators, Bonny.

There are literally 100’s of different Chinese manufacturers of construction equipment of varying and in some cases, dubious qualities and so far, what we have seen in the UK with the likes of LiuGong, Sany and Sunward, is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have to be honest, I had not heard of Bonny before and that’s what raised my interest, so I decided to do a bit of research on them. It transpires that the company started making excavators as far back as 1965 when they were branded as Changwa. It was to become part of the state-owned Sichuan Changjiang Engineering Machinery Group Co Ltd (CCCG) who make a wide range of construction equipment.

In June 1977, Bonny developed a brand-new 40-ton hydraulic excavator in China based on the R961 excavator from Liebherr company of Germany.

In the mid 1980’s it appears that the company had an on-going agreement going to build some larger models based on Liebherr designs which were modified for the Chinese and Russian markets, namely the WY562-CW, WY712-CW and the WY902-CW which was a 90-tonne class machine with an 8m³ bucket capacity. These machines were based on the old Liebherr R962, R972 and R982 models.

In the 1990’s machines were produced which drew their heritage from Kobelco designs. In 2003 the company changed its name to the Sichuan Bonny Heavy Machinery Co Ltd and focused on producing more of its own designs. Naturally being Chinese, one can see similarities to other more well-known global brands, but that’s what the Chinese do, and you have to say, they are very good at it too! 

Today the company manufactures a wide range of both diesel and electric powered excavator and material handling machines, but nothing smaller than a 26-tonne machine, right up to a 220-tonne mining excavator.

Check out this promotional video from the company.