Big Volvo Customer Visited in Finland

On my journey back down to Turku last Sunday, my friend Esa Suominen made a stop off at a quarry where a contractor from his home town of Rauma was set up to continue with the next phase of operations.

LM-Suomiset Oy is a large player in ground construction, earthworks and quarrying operations. Markku Suominen had started engaging in earthworks back in 1995. In the beginning, this work was only undertaken as a side-line to their agricultural work, but in 2001 the operations were incorporated. 

The family company was founded by father Lasse, and his two sons Ilkka and Markku Suominen. Initially the company's operations were only run in the summer months, but in 2004 Markku graduated as an engineer in community and environmental engineering, and since then the operation has been all year-round. 

The company run a large fleet of machines, trucks and supporting vehicles including excavators, wheeled loaders, dumptrucks, dozers, crushing and screening equipment. The excavator, wheeled loader and ADT fleet is largely dominated by Volvo equipment supplied by Volvo Finland.

Top of the range of excavators are two 75-tonne class Volvo EC750E L models one of which was present on the day of our visit to the quarry, basking serenely in the glorious sunshine of a spring Sunday afternoon.

A Volvo ECR235 EL was also parked up nearby, a very useful 25-tonne class machine to have in the arsenal, c/w Engcon tiltrotator and Novatron 3D GPS system. A very capable machine that is quite adaptable to working in tight quarters if required.

One of two 40-tonne class Volvo EC380 EL’s was also parked up armed with a breaker ready for work to start on the following Monday.

The company also had an impressive mobile crushing and screening unit on site, from Swedish manufacturer Jonsson.

Supporting the screener and stacking up the finished stone product was another machine from the Volvo ranks in the form of an L180H wheeled loading shovel.

There is something quite fascinating and slightly eerie about walking around a quarry when all the machines are at rest, so now its on my to do list to re-visit this interesting company during a future Finnish visit, to do a full-blown article on them for Earthmovers Magazine.

For the time being, checkout this video from our friends at Koneporssi which shows LM-Suomiset Oy in action on another major project in 2020.