by Nick Drew | Mon 04 Jul 2016
Diggers Hillhead 2016 highlights (Part One)
The traditionally unpredictable UK weather did its best to put the mockers on the biennial show which took place at its spiritual home of Buxton Quarry in Derbyshire, but us Brits were not going to be deterred by a bit of rain and in this the first of 3 blog posts this week, I will take a look back at some of the kit that caught my eye at the show.
Such is the nature of the beast these days, social media has already been awash with photos from the event, so I am sure most of you will have seen images similar to mine, but with Hillhead being such a high profile show its right and proper that it has its fair share of coverage on the Digger Man Blog. I arrived on the Monday afternoon to glorious sunshine but the warnings of biblical amounts of rain over the following days were a hot topic of conversation with most people I met!
On the opening day heading down the ramp into the main quarry, two new mini excavators from Sany were being displayed on the TDL Equipment stand. New to the UK market the 3.5 tonne class SY35U is a zero tailswing model which is powered by a Tier 4 final Yanmar engine which offers a power output rating of 27.4hp. The machine comes fitted with air conditioning as standard and offers superb all round visibility from the cab. The machine was displayed with ProDem PRB030 rock breaker from BPH Attachments.
Also on stand was the SY16C model which competes in the competitive 1.5 tonne class sector. This machine takes its power from a 15.6hp Yanmar engine and with an extremely competitive price on offer looks set to appeal to the regular users of this size of machine like small builders and utilities contractors.
On the Tiltrotator UK stand we discovered that Cornish plant man and “tilty” convert Mark Richards had the demonstrator gig on the stand operating a Hitachi Zaxis 135US with a Rototilt tilt-rotator. Rototilt is considered to be one of the premier tilt-rotator brands in Scandinavia and its estimated that there are now around 100 units in the field in the UK and Ireland.
The much anticipated arrival of Turkish manufacturer Hidromek into the UK market was celebrated on the Bunton’s Plant stand. The Yorkshire based importer displayed 3 machines in the distinctive black and white livery including the HMK102B Supra backhoe loader, the 14 tonne class HMK140LC hydraulic excavator and working on the demo plot, the HMK220LC which was in action loading another product from the Bunton Plant portfolio, the Bergmann 3012 Plus articulated dumptruck.
On my brief visit to the stand it was incredibly busy with huge interest being shown in the new products. I did get to speak to some of our readers on the stand who were all very complimentary about the quality of the Hidromek machines, which I was delighted to hear as it independently confirmed what I have been saying about the quality of the machines over the past 5 years both online and in the magazine.
Also making a guest appearance to the left of the ramp was Ollie Kitchin’s stunning new Swedish inspired Komatsu PW148 rubber duck which has been finished in blue paintwork and has been fitted with one of Engcon’s limited addition silver tilt-rotators. We will take a closer look at this machine in a stand-alone blog post.
Down in the main quarry now and Doosan fans were in for a treat in the shape of a 52 tonne class DX530LC-5 hydraulic excavator. The machine tips the scales at 52,878kgs and is powered by a Tier 4 final compliant 6 cylinder Scania engine which has a power rating of 380hp.
It was generally only nice weather for ducks throughout the duration of the show, but we caught this Hydrema MX14 rubber duck enjoying the dry period on the Tuesday morning. This machine was displayed by Mark Hyde and the Hydrema UK crew fitted with a TAB boom and Engcon tilt-rotator.
On the Kubota stand we got our first in “the metal” look at the KX71-3 which has been painted gold to celebrate the selling of the 50,000th Kubota mini excavator in the UK the machine is to be auctioned off for the Lighthouse Charity. You can find out more by clicking on this link.
At the other end of the scale Kubota took the opportunity to display on of the earliest known surviving Kubota mini excavators in the UK. The KH-10.D BULLPET machine which dates from the 1970’s has been fully restored to factory finished condition and I think you will agree they have done a wonderful job with her. I think this would make for an excellent retro style test drive article for Earthmovers Magazine in the future!
Look out for part two of our tour around the Hillhead showground later this week.