Four Kobelco crawlers for Weldex

Leading UK crawler crane rental house Weldex has added four new Kobelco crawlers to its fleet.

Kobelco Cranes Europe supplied two CKE600G and two CKE800G units to be based at the depot in Derbyshire, England. The 60 tonne capacity CKE600G has a 51.8 metre maximum boom. Larger is the 80 tonne capacity CKE800G with maximum main boom of 54.9 m.

Weldex has a strong focus on its fleet modernisation programme, “We have 120 cranes with an average age of four and a half years. They are all new and that is the way we want to keep it,” said Weldex CEO, Dougie McGilvray, who said that the company aims to replace all of its machines every eight years. “That is why we are working with Kobelco to update and modernise our fleet.”

McGilvray said that one of the drivers for purchasing Kobelco’s CKE series machines was their leading green technologies. Kobelco was the first manufacturer to fit its crawler cranes with an auto idle stop facility and low emission engines that are compliant with European Union Stage IIIB (US Tier 4i) exhaust emission requirements, Kobelco said. To achieve it all G-series crane engines have diesel particulate filters (DPF) and exhaust gas cleaning systems to reduce emission of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen (NOx).

It is important in central London where new planning rules will require a 40 % reduction in exhaust emissions from construction equipment by 2020, Kobelco said. “We do a lot of work within London area so we are looking at upgrading our fleet to all 3B compliant machines,” said McGilvray. “The cranes will be working on Crossrail and the new Thames Tideway Tunnel as well as carrying out general construction work in London and all over the UK.”

In addition to low emission technologies, Kobelco G series cranes have extra fuel saving measures, including the G-winch, which allows high speed hoisting without increasing engine speed, the manufacturer said.

This latest delivery helps substantiate a growing market in Europe, Mark Evans, Kobelco Cranes Europe sales manager, commented, “We experienced major growth throughout 2014 but this year is set to be even better with our first quarter sales outperforming the same period last year by a long way.”