Construction Digger Blog

Thu March 28 2024

Related Information

Hitachi 90-tonners for Breedon quarries [ – with video]

Digger Blogger | 10:00, Thu January 20 2022

Construction materials group Breedon has invested in two new Hitachi excavators for its Cloud Hill and Dowlow quarries in Derbyshire.

Delivered to site in October 2021, the two ZX890LCR-7 machines were selected on the back of the low running costs of the company’s first Hitachi machine, a six-series ZX890LCR-6, bought in 2019 with a 19,000-hour, five-year service contract.

 Supplied by Hitachi Construction Machinery (UK) – HCMUK – the three Hitachi Zaxis excavators are working at Breedon’s three largest quarries, which are the only sites to use 90-tonne machines. The ZX890LCR-6 works 20 hours a day at the Holme Hall quarry in South Yorkshire and has accumulated 8,500 hours feeding two million tonnes of materials a year into a mobile crusher.

The latest ZX890LCR-7s were chosen with 17,500-hour, seven-year contracts to account for the shorter shifts at Cloud Hill and Dowlow, where they are used to load rigid dump trucks. Carl Ashurst, area operations manager for Breedon’s central area in the UK, explains:  “Each Breedon area decides which machines it should buy and the five 90-tonne machines in the group all work within our region. Three of these large excavators are now ZX890s and we’ve been impressed by the overall package offered by Hitachi since we took the decision to buy the first Zaxis-6 machine.”

Related Information

He continues: “The ZX890LCR-6 has hit its production targets at Holme Hill and we have saved up to one third in fuel costs compared to the previous machine. The early signs are that the new models will deliver similar results in comparison to their predecessors.

“When combined with the reliability, the savings we’ve made with the Hitachi excavators are significant, especially when you consider that they are working on our three largest quarries. This is also important because the new ZX890LCR-7s have to keep running under tough working conditions for seven years and we need to have a degree of certainty for the cost of ownership.

“Hitachi has proved to be much better than the competition in this respect,” he adds.

 HCMUK also made a couple of adaptions specifically for Breedon. “Rather than having the steps – that allow access to the cab and upper structure – at the rear of the machine, we’re really pleased with how they’ve been positioned at the side,” Carl Ashurst says. “In addition, the buckets have been designed for each application – loading trucks and feeding crushers – which has resulted in an optimum level of penetration and efficient loading of the materials.”

 

MPU
MPU

Latest From The Digger Blog

Click here to view more from The Digger Blog »