Swedish attachment specialist
“In the last two years we started to get a lot of requests for quotations and we saw that a lot of people surfing our website were from the US,” says CEO Stefan Stockhaus. The company has sold 10 units to the US to date.
The excavator attachments, which Steelwrist says can increase productivity by 25-30% are likely to be of interest initially to owner-operators, says Stockhaus: “The more complex the job, the more efficient it gets. If you are paid by the hour, then it’s not interesting. If you are paid a lump sum, then this means you can do a five-day job in four days and move onto the next one.”
In mature markets, such as Steelwrist’s home country, rotating attachments are the norm, accounting for 90% of the market. Steelwrist is also seeing growing sales in Germany, France, Benelux and Australia.
On display at the show is a new product, Steelwrist Powertilt, which combines Helac’s Powertilt engine with Steelwrist’s patented Front Pin Lock technology. Though this does not incorporate Steelwrist’s signature rotation, it may be of interest to the US market, says Christian Yanes, Steelwrist’s general manager for the firm’s US branch based in Berlin, Connecticut.
“We know that the German market likes the Powertilt,” Yanes says. “Maybe for the US market it will be a good product too, given that this is not yet a mature market. It’s a sort of stepping stone.”
The Front Pin Lock technology means that even if the operator has not coupled up the attachment correctly, it will not fall off. This has advantages over sensor-based safety systems, says Yanes: “First, it’s more cost-effective and second it’s more secure because you don’t need to be controlling electrical signals.”
The Steelwrist Powertilt can be used on any excavator which has two hydraulic functions available. The range will cover excavators from 2 to 20 tonnes and are available with symmetrical couplers S40 to S60.
