First-hand equipment excellence

Since the last edition of Aggregates Business Europe, I’ve been on work trips to Finland and Northern Ireland, taking a close-up look at those two nations’ globally renowned excellence in crushing, screening, washing and conveyor solutions.

Finland, of course, boasts the crushing and screening equipment manufacturing heavyweights 448 Metso and 460 Sandvik Construction. Despite the continuing tough global economic climate, representatives from both companies were optimistic about the prospects of growth next year – which is, as I’m sure you’re all aware – a bauma, Munich year, with all the exciting new product launches and major sector player announcements on acquisitions and other key strategic moves, that the world’s biggest construction equipment exhibition entails.

Remaining in Finland, in east Helsinki to be precise, I was fascinated to learn about how the use of one mobile screen in a major stone, sand and top soil recycling application, coupled with some shrewd thinking from its owner on how to maximise revenue from its processed material, had led to the model’s purchase cost being paid off in just six months.

Over in Northern Ireland, it was interesting to hear the latest company and new product news from other big name quarrying equipment OEMs including 668 Terex Finlay, 447 Powerscreen, 3652 Terex Washing Systems and 3702 CDE Global. The amount of companies with top-class products and a rich history of quarrying-related expertise within a few miles of each other around Loch Neagh in County Tyrone is phenomenal. What has been notable on this recent trip and during previous visits to Northern Ireland has been not just the product innovation shown among the manufacturers, but the level of support shown to quarry sector businesses by Invest NI,  the main economic development agency for the country.

If you’re a big advocate of innovation in quarry-based equipment production and operation, two features within this edition of ABE will be of particular interest. We’ve got a piece by Chris Hansford, MD of Hansford Sensors, who talks about how vibration monitoring using sensors can boost machine reliability and cut operating costs in the aggregates industry. Crucially, as Chris states, vibration monitoring does not have to be time-consuming – preventing any gains from more informed machine maintenance needs being lost or partly lost by machine downtime. The other feature with innovation at its heart focuses on 5359 Tata Steel’s new multimillion euro heavy-gauge, hot-rolled steel decoiler at the company’s impressive site at Llanwern, near Newport, South Wales. The hot-rolled steel from Llanwern is used on the equipment of many leading construction and quarrying equipment manufacturers including 395 Caterpillar, 436 Komatsu, 3652 Terex, 439 Liebherr and 633 JCB.

As 2015 draws to a close, attention, as ever, focuses on how the aggregate materials and quarrying and construction equipment markets will shape up next year. While few will contradict the now much coined phrase of the “new normal” for the markets, with pre-2008 financial crisis sales levels unlikely to be seen again, there is much to be optimistic about from a European perspective. As mentioned earlier, 2016 sees the 386 bauma exhibition in Munich, and there is also the popular and extremely well attended 427 Hillhead show in Buxton, county Derbyshire, England. Perhaps next year will also be something of a “new beginning” in terms of wider and larger European aggregate materials and construction equipment demand.