Turkish Delight for Digger at Hidromek (Top blogs revisited)
Digger Blogger | 14:28, Mon January 03 2011
During last years holiday to Turkey I was very lucky to be invited for a VIP tour of the Hidromek backhoe loader and excavator manufacturing facility in Ankara.
We were staying in the resort town of Belek in the Antalya region and flew the 239 miles up to Ankara towards the end of our break, after over a week of lying and relaxing in the sun, it was great to get back into the machinery groove once more!
Our hosts for the day were Levent Karaagac (marketing manager) and Anil Bingol (export area manager) who gave us some background history on the company.
The Hidromek story is very similar to our own JCB's rise to fame from humble beginnings. The family owned company was founded in 1978 by Hasan Basri Bozkurt, as a small workshop for making hydraulic cylinders and backhoe attachments to fit farm tractors.
The company, which is still run today by Hasan and his two sons Ahmet and Mustafa, has experienced massive growth and is continuing to expand its range of products of backhoe loaders and hydraulic excavators.
In this photo we see one of Hidromek's very first premises with two examples of front end loaders which were fitted to farm tractors.
In 1986, the first Hidromek factory was built in Ankara and in 1989, the very first fully Turkish built backhoe loader was produced in the shape of this HMK80 model.
In 1990, the company started production of the HMK100 series, the 100 referring to the horsepower output on these machines. The following year Hidromek launched what they claim to be the world's first all wheel drive and all wheel steer backhoe loader the HMK100S.
In 1996, due to rapid expansion, a second factory was built in Ankara.
In 1998 the company obtained ISO9001 certification from TUV Nord GMBH. The following year saw the company launch an export programme, with first sales into Tunisia.
2002 saw the launch of the very popular HMK 220LC crawler excavator. This photo shows some of the latest models of this machine awaiting delivery in the yard.
Hidromek excavators now cover a wide range between 14-tons and 37-tons, with several attachment applications, also including specialized machines such as Material Handlers and Long Reach Excavators.
After extending the range massively, the company can now offer machines from 15-tons up to 37-tons. HMK220LC (22.3-tons), HMK300LC (30.5-tons) and HMK370LC (37.3-tons) are the Crawler Excavator models. HMK140W (15-tons) and HMK200W (21.6-tons) are the Wheeled Excavators.
Hidromek's production capacity reached to over 7.000 units of Backhoe Loaders and 3.000 units of Excavators per year. At this moment in time the company is exporting its backhoe loaders and excavators to more than 50 countries in 5 continents. Hidromek currently employs around 1000 members of staff at its four factories.
And so to the Ankara factory tour - first up was the backhoe loader manufacturing section and our guide for this was team leader Ibrahim Doganay, who was very keen to show us the impressive array of welding robots, of which there are currently 24 in operation.
It was great to see the stock of steel sheets of various thicknesses, steadily being cut and welded into the various components that are needed to build a backhoe loader.