Modern Mining May 2023

COVER STORY

Babcock’s equipment business has introduced the Volvo EC550E crawler excavator to the local market. Sales of the 55-tonne machine, which delivers the type of perfor mance normally associated with excavators in the 60/65 tonne class, have got off to an excellent start, with five units ordered and some already working on site. New Volvo excavator punches well above its weight

T he EC550E fills the gap between the highly successful 48-tonne EC480D excavator and the 75-tonne EC750D, also a very strong seller. It is one of the most advanced excavators in the Volvo line-up and offers class-leading produc tivity and fuel economy. According to Babcock, it is the perfect partner to Volvo’s 30-t and 40-t capacity articulated haulers, the A30G and the A40G, with the ability to reduce the number of required passes and dramati cally improve cycle times.

“We are extremely excited by the capabilities of the EC550E,” says David Vaughan, MD of Babcock’s Equipment division. “It offers 25% better fuel effi ciency than other machines in its weight class and up to 40% higher productivity, and we believe it is going to be a real winner. We see it repeating the success we’ve had with both the EC480D and the EC750D, which are both mar ket leaders.”

The EC550E is available with a range of heavy-duty rock buckets.

Lance Mannix, General Manager– Sales, says the EC550E even stands up well against the EC750D. “We’ve put the two machines up against each other in the field and the EC550E keeps up with its big ger brother in ways that we would never have anticipated. It can do almost everything that the EC750D does in light to medium applications although, of course, it will fall behind in more demand ing heavy-duty applications in very hard rock.”

The new Volvo EC550E excavator.

Features that enable the EC550E to punch above its weight are a powerful Volvo die sel engine delivering

6  MODERN MINING  May 2023