by Nick Drew | Tue 18 Jul 2017
Postcards from Finland (Part One)
In this blog post I’m going to take a look back at some of the previously unseen photos from my visit to the Mansen Morinat plant and machinery event in Tampere, Finland, with supporting videos from our friends at Finnish publication Koneporssi.
Our first port of call on the Friday morning was to the premises of Finnish Komatsu construction equipment dealers Suomen Rakennuskone Oy. There was a huge selection of Komatsu machines awaiting the visitors, 67 of them in total and 22 of those machines were already sold and ready to be dispatched to their new owners following the event.
As a visiting Brit it was also great to see so many Komatsu excavators which had been manufactured in the UK at Komatsu’s excellent facility in the North East of England at Birtley, including this PC490LC-11 pictured above, which displayed the serial number K70057 having been built at KUK earlier this year and this PC210LC-10 model complete with Rototilt tiltrotator which was available to try out on the demo area.
Check out our friend and Koneporrsi reporter Olli Paivio’s walk-around video from this venue.
Traffic outside the Volvo Construction Equipment depot was unusually chaotic by Finnish standards, but when we eventually made it in we found plenty of machines to paw over. Stick time was also available here too and I took up the chance to have a go on a challenge event, which I normally try to avoid back home! This looked easy to do in theory but in practice was a bit tricky with the rubber bunjee strap being a bit deceptive in its movement, but it was a bit of fun and I enjoyed my time on the Volvo ECR25D.
It was interesting to spot a couple of guys from the Hitachi dealership checking out this 30 tonne class Volvo EC300EL hydraulic excavator, which was fitted with a tilting bucket and was sporting the sign writing of its new owners Harma Infra. As it happens the Hitachi dealers yard is just next door on this industrial estate, but more on that shortly.
Check out this video by Koneporssi from the Volvo event.
Just a short walk on down the road and we arrived at the large premises of Finnish Hitachi dealership Rotator Oy who are also dealers for Bell, Bomag, Merlo and McCloskey to name a few. Naturally the yard was dominated by the familiar orange livery of the well-known Japanese brand of construction and mining equipment which included this Zaxis 220W wheeled excavator C/W Engcon tiltrotator and static brush attachment.
Also of interest was this 35 tonne class ZX350LC-6 hydraulic excavator which was fitted with a Finnish built Marttiini mtilt-40 and mRx-40 rotation combination which also features ram guard protection, could these be the next entrant into the rapidly expanding UK tiltrotator sector?
Check out the Koneporssi video from the Rotator Oy visit.
Look out for part two of this blog post later this week.