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Member News Steelwrist Acquires UK Distributor Steelwrist has acquired its UK distributor AgCon UK (now Steelwrist UK) and has expanded its organisation to South Korea. With the recent opening of own offices in the United States, Denmark and South Korea, Steelwrist now has own operations in 10 countries and regular sales in 22 countries. As the market for tiltrotators continues to grow, Steelwrist is expanding with own organisation in to markets of strategic importance. The relationship with AgCon goes back to 2009 when Pat Bulcock was employed by Steelwrist as the UK sales representative. Pat later decided to start his own company in 2013, still focusing on Steelwrist tiltrotators. The business has since grown and today employs a team of six, that are now coming back into the Steelwrist family. Pat Bulcock will continue as the managing director for Steelwrist UK. “Pat and his team have done a fantastic job and he is known as Mr. Tiltrotator in the UK market. Thanks to Pat we have a very good position in England, Scotland and Wales with a lot of happy
customers.” says Stefan Stockhaus, Steelwrist CEO. Pat Bulcock, managing director of Steelwrist UK said, “The trick with the UK market has been to find technically skilled personnel that can install tiltrotators in a professional way. There is huge potential in this market and we now see that the tiltrotator business is taking off. The biggest advantage for coming back into the Steelwrist family is that it will give us a stronger position to set up a network of service partners and dealers in the UK market.” The UK market has passed the early adopter stage but with its large portion of rental excavators and relatively low portion of own operators the overall tiltrotator penetration is still fairly low. “We have not yet reached the level in the UK where the contractors and groundworkers have understood the productivity gained when a tiltrotator is installed on an excavator. For reasons unknown, there seem to be less focus on productivity in the UK market compared to many other countries,” Stockhaus
Steelwrist has acquired its UK distributor AgCon UK. continues. “South Korea on the other hand has almost the opposite business structure compared to the UK. A very large portion of owner operators, fixed price contracts and the largest wheeled excavator market in the world. This makes South Korea extremely interesting.”
Ship Ahoy! Hyundai construction machinery dealer Young Plant Sales, based in Doune Scotland, has recently supplied a bespoke 22 tonne HX220LR Long Reach excavator (first one sold) to Ardmaleish Boatbuilding Co, based on the Island of Bute. The machine has been fitted onto a newly commissioned dredger, which is working in Bridlington Harbour for the
Bridlington Harbour Commissioners. Ardmaleish Boatbuilding Co, headed up by managing director, Ewan Ferguson, won the contract to build the new dredger barge via a company called Marine Design International who put a specification out to tender, on behalf of the Bridlington Harbour Commissioners, to construct the vessel. Mr Ferguson said, “We received the spec for the new build and we priced competitively for the contract and we were successful.” The Gypsey Race was built to replace Bridlington Harbour Commissioners old dredger which was also called the Gypsy Race, but without the e! This was scrapped some time ago in 1997 as the dredger was some 40 years old. Bridlington then used contractors to dredge the The Gypsey Race Dredger is fitted with a bespoke 22 tonne HX220LR Long Reach excavator. harbour which was a costly
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affair hence the decision to commission the brand new dredger. The Gypsey Race is 25.46 metres in length, 8 metres wide, 102.7 tonnes in weight and is made of steel. This is the 10th new build for this yard. Fitting the HX220LR to the vessel was carried out in stages. Mr Ferguson explained the process he said, “The machine was mounted on the barge once build was complete. We pre-designed the stool and flange to suit the HX220LR from drawings provided by Young Plant, which made it relatively easy to fit. Firstly, we removed the excavator from its tracks and took a template of the flange. We then drilled the flange and welded it onto the ship. We removed the boom off the machine and we craned the cab in first then bolted it to the stool we made to sit it on – we then fitted the boom once the machine was in place.” The vessel is being used to keep Bridlington Harbour dredged to maintain safe passage for all vessels in and out of the harbour and it is envisaged that the vessel will be chartered out to other similar small ports and inlets to dredge their spoil.