This week celebrating its 10,000th crushing and screening production plant since the 4518 introduced in 1996, Keestrack is busy developing its worldwide manufacturing capacities.
The Belgian aggregates process plant manufacturer recently staged the official opening of a new 8740m² assembly complex, marking the second extension phase of its main factory in Šternberk, Czech Republic. This year will also include the opening of Keestrack’s Indian plant assembly site in Neemrana and the start of work on additional production capacity at Keestrack Italy’s base in Ponzano, around 30km north of Venice.
Targeting 60% revenue growth on its current €120 million annual turnover by 2022, Keestrack invested early in modern, fully automated manufacturing technologies, such as plasma cutting, to guarantee fast and flexible internal supply of key components. In 2009, Keestrack (Keestrack CZ) introduced an anti-corrosive zinc-phosphate nano powder painting line in Šternberk providing a high-quality long-lasting finish of frame components and other plant key structures.
In 2014 Keestrack management decided to launch a mid-term development programme to expand the capacities at Šternberk. The first of three planned steps was adding a modern 5000m² factory in 2016 for steel construction, additional to the existing 8000m² halls. This has significantly improved raw material logistics. Operational since September 2018 and marking the second phase of the programme has been the addition of an 8,740m² complex to accommodate parts storage and four separate assembly lines for screeners and crushers.
Both Šternberk projects, totalling an investment of €6 million since 2015, offer a state-of-the-art working environment at the 480-employee strong Keestrack CZ factory site. The site’s optimised production processes are said by Keestrack to have improved the work-flow and significantly reduced lead times for components and complete plants.
As an example, Keestrack CZ now has a four-cycle line production process for its medium range of scalpers (K3 to K6) and the new 30tonne R3 impact crusher. Compared to the former work cell production, the new process is expected to reduce the manufacturing time by up to 30%, depending on the type of model.
According to Keestrack management, phase three of the factory extension will be initiated in 2019/20. It includes a new quality control facility, a modern spare parts logistics terminal and a customer centre. Parallel to the floor space extension, Keestrack CZ will also implement a new powder coating line, greatly increasing production capacities.
Keestrack’s Ponzano, Italy operation (Keestrack Italy) is to be the base of the company’s expansion of its heavy range with powerful track-mobile processing plant for quarrying and mining operation. The existing 5000m² production of Keestrack Italy will at least be doubled by the planned factory extension, set to be finalised in 2020.
Production of Keestrack’s eTrack Indian branch crushers will start in May or June 2019 at the company’s new assembly plant in Neemrana, around 100kms south of New Delhi. The first machines will leave the 10,000m² facility in August. The production programme initially includes the full hybrid B4e jaw crusher and H4e cone crusher, identified to meet the demands of Indian contractors in terms of productivity, transport and onsite mobility.
Among models being unveiled this week by Keestrack is the S5e Solar stacker, believed to be the first directly solar-powered mobile processing plant worldwide.
This article first appeared on our Daily News website at bauma 2019.
