by Richard Cosgrove | Mon 12 May 2025
Sponsored post - Lowest cost and highest increase in performance at maximum standard of quality
Back in 2007, Holp launched out of conviction with its RotoTop the concept of endless rotation and the associated increase in performance for excavators. This idea has since been taken up by many players in the market, but the RotoTop still offers the most favourable and economical solution.
For Günter Holp and his team, one thing has been clear for many years: as a carrier for numerous attachments, the excavator must ensure that the tasks on construction sites are not only completed on time, but get done more and more economically. The RotoTop's endless rotation gives the excavator the flexibility it needs to reach all corners of the working area without having to be moved constantly, significantly reducing manual labour for the construction site team and cutting the overall processing time by increasing performance.
Even though the RotoTop has now become standard equipment for many construction companies, Holp has been criticised repeatedly for being too expensive. ‘Our rotary drive is not the cheapest to buy in the market due to its robust design with the largest gearwheel and the largest rotary feedthroughs, but it is definitely the most favourable once you look at its entire service life,’ explains Günter Holp. In addition, people often only compare the purchase price of the RotoTop with tilt rotators, ignoring the fact that the tilt rotator is many times more expensive to install. However, the RotoTop is only around half the price of a tilt rotator - but can fulfil all the tasks needed on a standard construction site.
If one takes the smallest RotoTop RT.022 without rotary joint for excavators from 600 kg to 2.75 tonnes and calculate its purchase price including attachment and 20% of the purchase price for a complete overhaul after the first excavator life at a total of just 10,000 operating hours for two excavator lives, the RotoTop costs just 75 cents per operating hour.
The largest RotoTop RT.402.180, fully equipped with rotary joint and changeover valve for excavators with an operating weight of 40 to 45 tonnes will cost €2.86 per hour in this calculation while assuming 15,000 operating hours. ‘It's worth taking a closer look at such a purchase, because if you invest wrongly, you pay twice,’ says Günter Holp.
The most important factor in the savings generated by the RotoTop for the contractor is the significant increase in performance thanks to the completely different way of working with the excavator due to the endless rotation: Holp guarantees an increase of 10% for even the simplest tasks such as loading lorries or dumpers. ‘The fact that excavator drivers and lorry drivers often discuss how to approach the lorry correctly wastes a lot of time to begin with, with RotoTop this discussion hardly ever arises, as it is possible to load the lorry from almost any position.’
According to customers, a 30 to 50% increase is not uncommon for many excavation and drainage jobs, and for gardening and landscaping work there are even reports of a threefold increase in performance. Statements such as ‘The RotoTop saves us almost all the manual labour’ or ‘The RotoTop replaces the employee we can no longer find on the labour market’ are frequently heard from satisfied customers.
What's more, the RotoTop allows all attachments to rotate 360° endlessly and ensures that more work can be done with the help of a single machine, which also needs to be moved much less frequently. In addition, a larger machine can often be used as the bucket can be moved in a three-dimensional way because of the combination of rotation and kinematics of the excavator. All of this saves machine costs, fuel, time and costs for the already scarce manpower, which is simultaneously protected from unnecessarily physically demanding tasks.
Further saving potential lies in the fact that the RotoTop makes all attachments endlessly rotatable, meaning that the contractor no longer has to buy them with a rotary motor and they are therefore cheaper. Thanks to the 8-way rotary joint, the excavator is always fully equipped for every attachment, even with fully hydraulic quick couplers.
No supplier on the market other than Holp has been building such high-quality, flat and lightweight yet robust rotary actuators for so long, because Holp has the DNA of an excavator operator and knows exactly what is needed on the construction site for everyday’s work. There are other reasons why the RotoTop can be described as the benchmark for slewing drives: The mega-flow oil feed-through (6- and 8-way), which is unique on the market, always brings the most oil to the attachment, making even the toughest continuous operations with tillers, mulchers, CutWheel, etc. a relaxed working routine for contractors.
Holp has been able to offer a 3-year or 3,000-hour guarantee on the RotoTop for 10 years now, regardless of the application. No other rotary drive is demonstrably designed for two excavator lifetimes: Holp is the only manufacturer to overhaul the rotary drive for a second excavator life at the end of the first life - at a fixed price of 20 per cent of the purchase price, making it the most cost-effective attachment.
Sales Managing Director Torsten Schick summarises it as follows: ‘With us, you buy the rotary drive once for two excavator lifetimes, with others you often buy it twice for one excavator lifetime.’ This may not make the RotoTop the cheapest slewing drive to buy, but it is definitely the most favourable over the entire service life and therefore also the most economical. To make it even better for customers, Holp offers a special cash-back-deal: Everybody who buys a RotoTop and takes a loan for it until the end of 2025, can get back all interest paid within the first twelve months.
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