by Nick Drew | Mon 11 Apr 2022
Komatsu on the Rocks in Finland
The Sjöblom Brotherhood opened the first gravel pit in 1970 in what is now Tuusula. After its depletion, further areas were acquired from Senkker in 1988. Today, two of the five brothers, Juhani, and Seppo are still owners, while Karl, Juhani’s son, is the CEO and co-owner.
The brothers realized early on that a large aggregate plant is the best concept in terms of both customer service and environmental impact.
The scale of the Seepsula’s Senkker aggregate operation is immense, and the area is estimated to be resourceful for at least another hundred years. Millions of cubic metres have already been mined from here over the decades.
One of the major contractors working at this facility is Jarkan Maansiirto Oy, who has recently taken delivery of a 200-tonne class Komatsu PC2000-11 hydraulic excavator, to replace an outgoing Liebherr R 9150 B, which they had been running previously.
The machine, which has been supplied in backhoe configuration and is fitted with an 11m3 heavy duty rock bucket, has been supplied by Finnish Komatsu dealer Suomen Rakennuskone Oy.
The PC2000-11 tips the scales at 202-tonnes and will continue the operation loading a fleet of 5 x Komatsu HD605 rigid dumptrucks, which it takes four passes to fill each truck, the trucks then travel an average distance of 1.4 kilometres to the stone crushing equipment.
Our good friend and editor of Finnish publication Konepörssi, Olli Paivio, was lucky enough to be allowed to operate the machine for a brief spell. Olli stated that this was the largest machine he had ever operated during his 35-year professional career as a machinery journalist.
Pictured above: Olli Paivio at the controls of the PC2000-11, what a privilege to be invited to have a go on such a large machine, something that is a pipe dream for many of us.
Pictured above at the handover day from left to right are: Petri Ruostetoja Seepsula Oy, Jari Salomäki SR-O, Mika Siitonen Jarkan Maansiirto Oy, Timo Koiranen Jarkan Maansiirto Oy, Tero Ala-Tala SR-O and Peter Barrett Komatsu.
Checkout the video of this stunning looking machine from Olli below.
The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Olli Paivio and Konepörssi for the material included in this blog post.