Diggers Royal Cornwall Show Highlights (Part Four Final Round-Up)

Concluding our coverage of the Royal Cornwall Show 2023 with a look at the best of the rest who exhibited the annual rural festival in Wadebridge.

Our friends over at Kellands Plant Sales had another jam-packed stand featuring a wide range of machines of all sizes predominantly from the Develon (formerly Doosan) brand. All the big local contractors had a presence on the stand, including Champion’s, Steve Hoskin Construction, MJL, and in addition multi-faceted up and coming business Duchy Plant, who had a nice example of the DX140LCR with Engcon tiltrotator on display.

Our friend Courtney King, of Courtney King Plant Hire also continues to expand his business, having recently added a dozer to his fleet of machines, at the RCS he also had a Mecalac 2-tonne class swivel skip dumper on the stand.

Over on the Avant machinery division they presented an impressive water feature display featuring a Mecalac TA6 site dumper and an Avant 860i Opti-Drive compact loader, apparently on the last day they introduced some bubble bath into it for added affect!

Vincents Tractors and Plant had their usual large display of Kubota machines on display including this KX080-4@2 one of a significant order supplied to Helston and Exter based MJL Contractors. Missing this time around was Vincent’s iconic double decker bus which was previously an ever-present focal point on the stand, I understand it has now been sold to a bus enthusiast.

Over on the Machine Serve stand Phil and the team presented examples from their wide portfolio of products including this 2-tonne class Yanmar SV19 VT mini excavator c/w hydraulic gripper talon, a really nice example of these Japanese designed, French built mini excavators.

The new dealer for Hidromek in the West Country MPS (South West) Ltd were exhibiting at the show for the very first time and had a good selection of the Turkish manufacturer’s machines on stand for visitors to peruse over. Standout machine was the new HMK230LC H4 hydraulic excavator, fitted with a Holp RotoTop, which has been purchased by Plymouth based Porteous Groundworks, which looked stunning it its company livery. We will be reporting on this machine from site in a future edition of Earthmovers Magazine. 

Finally, we visited Mike Darch and the team from Marubeni-Komatsu, who have been doing really well in the South and South West recently, they presented a nice selection of machines, as you will see in the video below, but a standout for me was the WB97R backhoe loader, mainly I think because we don’t see that many of these around.

Another fantastic show this year, which was well supported as ever and the weather played a massive part in its success too, we look forward to next years event with great enthusiasm.