The Forgotten British Mini Excavator Challenger

I recently spotted a post on Instagram by keen machinery enthusiast Paul Tobin from Ireland, which revealed a photo of a very rare British built mini excavator, which I am delighted to share on the pages of the Digger Man Blog.

Paul runs a great account which is simply known as @diggersofinsta, in which as it says on the tin, Paul shares his photos of diggers and machinery to his ever-expanding network of followers. The photo Paul posted was a shot of a very tidy looking Beresford B15-X mini excavator, although speculation on the page was that it was a Nissan model, I was quick to suggest what I thought to be its true identity.

Photo Courtesy of The Amazing Story of Excavators by Peter Grimshaw

In the late 70’s early 80’s the Japanese brands were making a concerted effort to push the new mini excavator concept, and machines from the likes of Kubota, Yanmar, Komatsu and Takeuchi to name a few were appearing on UK sites far and wide.

In 1981 a West Midlands plant hirer Ian Beresford decided he was going to have a go at producing his own British built machine. The end result was the 3.25-tonne, rather oddly numbered B15-X.

Photo: I came across photos of this resprayed machine which was up for sale and clearly has an identity crisis.  

The machine was powered by a 1.8 litre Leyland water cooled diesel engine capable of producing a power output rating of 39.8hp. But it was a pretty basic machine, using hydraulic valve blocks similar to those found on old JCB 3C’s.

I understand not that many were built and just 12 months after they had started producing them the manufacturing rights for the machine were sold to the French Manitou company, who rebranded the excavator as the Manidig 325. That was a short-lived affair though as production was phased out after just two years, as the Japanese dominance in the market continued.

Information and photos on these machines are equally rare and I was unable to find any video footage of one in action, I did find the other photos above though, which offer us a little insight into these old excavators.

Thanks again to Paul Tobin for sharing the opening photo in this blog post.