Plant & Equipment News

Tower Cranes Take Construction Engineering into Amazon Climate Science

Tower Cranes Take Construction Engineering into Amazon Climate Science The deployment of four Liebherr 85 EC-B tower cranes at the AmazonFACE research site near Manaus reads, at first glance, as a curiosity: construction plant repurposed for science, a photogenic footnote to a climate story. The more useful reading for anyone in the equipment business is … Read more…

Vermeer and Interlune to Industrialise the Lunar Construction Supply Chain

Vermeer and Interlune to Industrialise the Lunar Construction Supply Chain The most revealing thing about the expanded partnership between Interlune and Vermeer is not that a lunar excavator exists. It is that a mainstream industrial-equipment manufacturer, with nearly eight decades of terrestrial earthmoving behind it, now treats the Moon as a serviceable jobsite rather than … Read more…

LANDCROS Signals Hitachi’s Shift from Construction to Construction Intelligence

LANDCROS Signals Hitachi’s Shift from Machinery to Construction Intelligence Hitachi Construction Machinery has opened its LANDCROS Innovation Studios Challenge to Europe for the first time, inviting startups to submit ready-to-test solutions between 31 July and 30 September 2026 and pitch to the company and its partners at a Demo Day in Amsterdam on 3 December … Read more…

Skyjack’s ELEVATE and the Race to Own the Connected Rental Machine

Skyjack’s ELEVATE and the Race to Own the Connected Rental Machine Skyjack’s latest push around its ELEVATE telematics suite, its operator-facing ELEVATE Live tool and a widening line of ACCESSORYZER safety attachments looks, at first glance, like routine product housekeeping from a well-regarded access manufacturer. Read against what the largest rental groups are now doing … Read more…

Bobcat Wins Three CMME Awards Signalling a Broader Play for Gulf Worksites

Bobcat Wins Three CMME Awards Signalling a Broader Play for Gulf Worksites Bobcat left the 2026 Construction Machinery Middle East (CMME) Awards in Dubai with three trophies, and on the surface that reads as a straightforward night of industry recognition. The more instructive story sits in the shape of the categories the company won rather … Read more…

The Mid-Sized Excavator is Being Re-Specified as a Multi-Tool Platform

The Mid-Sized Excavator is Being Re-Specified as a Multi-Tool Platform A North Yorkshire groundworks contractor quietly re-equipping one excavator is not, on its own, a market event. When J Lingard Site Services fitted a Rototilt RC5 tiltrotator to a new 16-tonne Volvo EC160E, complete with Leica machine control, an in-cab hydraulic tool-change system and active … Read more…

Standby Power Moves to the Centre of the AI Data Centre Buildout

Standby Power Moves to the Centre of the AI Data Centre Buildout The tightest constraint on the artificial intelligence buildout has quietly shifted from processors to power, and specifically to the physical equipment that delivers and secures it. Developers can place orders for accelerators faster than utilities can connect new load or manufacturers can build … Read more…

Edge Detection and the Shift From Paving Craft to Sensor-Guided Control

Edge Detection and the Shift From Paving Craft to Sensor-Guided Control A single laser sensor bolted to the side plate of a paving screed does not, on the face of it, sound like a strategic development. Yet the quiet arrival of automated screed width control on Germany’s B535 federal road points to a deeper change … Read more…

Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground

Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground On paper, the new test rig that Liebherr France SAS commissioned at Colmar in early 2026 is a durability tool. It costs close to EUR 2.5 million, sits inside an enclosed hall, and exists to punish crawler excavator structures until their weak points reveal themselves. … Read more…

Skipper’s C8 Barrier and the New Economics of Street Works Safety

Skipper’s C8 Barrier and the New Economics of Street Works Safety Pedestrian barriers rank among the least glamorous items in the construction supply chain, yet they sit at the point where three separate pressures now converge: a tightening expectation that street works remain navigable for blind and partially sighted people, the stubborn logistics cost of … Read more…

The Independent Blueprint Behind Y.E.S.’s Kubota Expansion

The Independent Blueprint Behind Y.E.S.’s Kubota Expansion Falkirk-based Your Equipment Solutions has committed to more than 70 Kubota mini excavators from local dealer HRN Tractors, and on the surface the deal reads as a routine fleet top-up by a regional plant and tool hirer. Read against the wider market, the transaction says something more instructive … Read more…

Yanmar and Hitachi Explore a New Model for Competing in Compact Equipment

Yanmar and Hitachi Explore a New Model for Competing in Compact Equipment When two Japanese manufacturers sign a letter of intent to “explore” a collaboration, the temptation is to file it under industrial courtesy and move on. The agreement signed on 23 July 2026 between Yanmar Holdings and Hitachi Construction Machinery deserves closer reading, because … Read more…

JCB Hydromax Sets 368mph Record Ahead of FIA Hydrogen World Record Bid

JCB Hydromax Sets 368mph Record Ahead of FIA Hydrogen World Record Bid JCB’s Hydromax streamliner has clinched a Southern California Timing Association speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, averaging 368.347mph across two runs and breaking a class benchmark that had stood since 2010. The headline is a motorsport one, but the significance for construction, … Read more…

Predictive Sales Data Comes for Construction Equipment Dealers

Predictive Sales Data Comes for Construction Equipment Dealers For most of the past decade, competitive advantage in construction equipment distribution has been argued in terms of iron. Dealers and manufacturers have competed on product line, price, uptime and the strength of their product support, and they have measured themselves after the fact on units moved … Read more…

Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining

Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining When RCT technicians commissioned the last Caterpillar R2900G ever sold, at a silver and lead operation in Queensland, the moment carried more weight than the retirement of a single machine. The loader in question, an NLK-specification unit, was the fourth of four new R2900G LHDs … Read more…

CNH’s Norcar Alliance Signals a New Strategy for Compact Construction Equipment

CNH’s Norcar Alliance Signals a New Strategy for Compact Construction Equipment The industrial cooperation agreement CNH Construction signed with Finland’s Oy Norcar Ab on 24 July 2026 looks, on the surface, like a modest distribution deal: a small manufacturer of sub-two-tonne miniloaders gains a route to market through the CASE and New Holland Construction dealer … Read more…

The Tadano AC 7.450-1 and the Economics of Constrained Lifting

The Tadano AC 7.450-1 and the Economics of Constrained Lifting A single lift in the medieval heart of Bruges rarely carries much market significance, yet the operation Belgian crane service provider Gheysens completed with a Tadano AC 7.450-1 is worth reading closely. The job was small in tonnage terms and the decisive problem was never … Read more…

Utility Strike Prevention Goes Fleet-Wide as Network Plus Backs Live Dig Radar

Utility Strike Prevention Goes Fleet-Wide as Network Plus Backs Live Dig Radar Network Plus has committed to fitting RodRadar’s Live Dig Radar across more than 200 machines in its repair and maintenance fleet, a multi-year programme that moves underground strike avoidance out of the realm of procedure and toolbox talks and into the specification of … Read more…

Electrified Harbour Cranes are Reshaping Port Competitiveness at Gulfport

Electrified Harbour Cranes are Reshaping Port Competitiveness at Gulfport SSA Marine and the Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport have commissioned a second Liebherr LHM 550 hybrid mobile harbour crane, supported by a US$1.6 million state grant that will fund the electrical connection needed to run the machine on grid power. On the surface this … Read more…

Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving

Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving Komatsu has spent nearly two decades proving that heavy machines can run themselves. Its FrontRunner system put the first commercial autonomous haul trucks into mines in 2008, and in April 2026 the company became the first manufacturer to commission a thousand ultra-class driverless … Read more…

One Bobcat’s T86 Compact Track Loader and a $59 Billion Market

One Bobcat’s T86 Compact Track Loader and a $59 Billion Market A single compact track loader arriving on a roadworks site near Brescia would not normally register as market news. Gambara Asfalti, a paving and asphalt contractor of forty years’ standing that works across the northern Italian provinces of Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Parma and Piacenza, has … Read more…

Volvo Targets Japan’s Urban Construction Boom with a Smarter Compact Excavator

Volvo Targets Japan’s Urban Construction Boom with a Smarter Compact Excavator The New Generation ECR355 arrives in a market defined less by weak demand than by the shortage of people available to meet it. When Volvo Group Japan handed the ceremonial key to Takayama Kenzai Kogyo at CSPI-EXPO, presenting its 36-tonne compact-tail-swing excavator to the … Read more…

Beyond Heavy Iron – The Next Century of Construction Equipment

Beyond Heavy Iron – The Next Century of Construction Equipment One hundred years ago the construction equipment industry crossed a threshold it never crossed back over. Steam shovels, cable excavators and the first crawler dozers replaced the muscle that had built roads, harbours and railways for millennia, and in doing so they changed the industry’s … Read more…

Bobcat Compact Equipment Moves to the Front Line of Europe’s Wildfire Prevention

Bobcat Compact Equipment Moves to the Front Line of Europe’s Wildfire Prevention Crews in rural Guadalajara spent the third week of July 2026 working a fire that had burned more than 32,000 hectares across a landscape where roughly 90 per cent of the affected ground sits inside a national park. Spain’s Minister for the Ecological … Read more…

JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control

JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control For close to two decades, construction telematics has been sold on visibility. Fleet owners were promised they would finally know where their machines were, how hard they were working and when they needed servicing. JCB’s latest update to LiveLink moves the proposition somewhere … Read more…

Why Equipment Reliability Matters on Major Infrastructure Projects

Why Equipment Reliability Matters on Major Infrastructure Projects Major infrastructure projects rely on precise coordination. A motorway widening scheme, bridge replacement or major drainage installation may involve dozens of contractors working to carefully planned programmes where every activity depends on another being completed on time. When equipment fails unexpectedly, even a relatively min… Read more…

Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders

Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders Stevens Equipment Rental has taken delivery of its 1000th new machine, and the choice of asset says more about the direction of the UK plant market than the milestone itself. The Cumbrian rental business, trading for more than 50 years and formerly known as … Read more…

Liebherr Power Deals Shift the Battleground From Machine Price to Lifetime Cost

Liebherr Power Deals Shift the Battleground From Machine Price to Lifetime Cost The second round of Liebherr Power Deals, running from July 2026, looks at first glance like a conventional dealer incentive programme. Read the structure rather than the headline, however, and something more deliberate emerges. The centrepiece is not a machine at all; it … Read more…

Danfoss Expands Global Fluid Conveyance Reach with Alfagomma Acquisition

Danfoss Expands Global Fluid Conveyance Reach with Alfagomma Acquisition Danfoss signed a definitive agreement on 9 July 2026 to acquire Alfagomma, the Vimercate-based manufacturer of hoses and fittings, and the transaction will fold roughly EUR 600 million of annual sales into the Fluid Conveyance division of Danfoss Power Solutions. Judged only on scale, the deal … Read more…

Volkswagen Expands Transporter Range with First Plug-in Hybrid Van

Volkswagen Expands Transporter Range with First Plug-in Hybrid Van Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles opened UK order books on 21 July for the first plug-in hybrid version of the Transporter, priced from £38,155 excluding VAT and offered in Panel Van, Kombi and Shuttle form. The specification is familiar to anyone who has followed the Ford Pro architecture … Read more…

EBRD Backs Tavanbogd’s Hitachi Workshop in Mongolia

EBRD Backs Tavanbogd’s Hitachi Workshop in Mongolia A MNT 143 billion loan for a maintenance shed is easy to underestimate. Read against where money and margin are actually moving in the heavy-equipment business, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s latest Mongolian commitment looks less like real-estate finance and more like a wager on the … Read more…

The Hidden Economy Behind Every Construction Machine

The Hidden Economy Behind Every Construction Machine A machine may be purchased once, but it consumes, wears, moves, communicates, breaks down, gets repaired, is refinanced and eventually changes owners across a working life that can extend well beyond a decade. Attachments, tyres, tracks, lubricants, filters, hydraulic components, replacement parts, fleet software, transport, servicing, refurbish… Read more…

Volvo, Komatsu and Liebherr Anchor INTERMAT 2027 as Electric Turns Commercial

Volvo, Komatsu and Liebherr Anchor INTERMAT 2027 as Electric Turns Commercial The construction machinery business tends to judge a trade show long before its doors open, and the signal that matters most is not the visitor forecast but the exhibitor list. On that measure INTERMAT 2027 has already made its case. With the countdown to … Read more…

P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control

P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control A family-run civil engineering contractor from County Tyrone has spent ten years proving a point that much of the wider construction sector is still only beginning to accept, which is that sustained investment in digital machine control changes the economics of groundworks … Read more…

Develon to Spotlight AI Safety and Series 9 Heavy Excavators at steinexpo 2026

Develon to Spotlight AI Safety and Series 9 Heavy Excavators at steinexpo 2026 When Develon returns to steinexpo this September, the more revealing story is not the size of its stand but what the machines standing on it say about where quarry and construction equipment is heading. The manufacturer is bringing seven large machines to … Read more…

Herrenknecht TBM Completes Critical SuedLink Tunnel Beneath the Elbe

Herrenknecht TBM Completes Critical SuedLink Tunnel Beneath the Elbe The completion of tunnelling beneath the River Elbe has removed one of the most technically demanding obstacles facing Germany’s SuedLink electricity transmission programme. On 22 June 2026, the tunnel boring machine Elsa reached its reception shaft at Wischhafen, completing a 5.2-kilometre underground drive from Wewelsfleth in &… Read more…

Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future

Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future The strategic partnership between Hitachi Construction Machinery and Pronto points towards a more commercially accessible model for mine automation, one designed around the equipment operators already own rather than an entirely new fleet tied to one manufacturer. Their memorandum of understanding covers the … Read more…

Australia’s AU$100 Million Equipment Auction Signals Deeper Market Liquidity

Australia’s AU$100 Million Equipment Auction Signals Deeper Market Liquidity Australia’s construction, mining, transport and agricultural equipment market has delivered a significant measure of its underlying strength. Ritchie Bros.’ 2026 National End of Financial Year auctions generated more than AU$100 million in gross transaction value, with 5,516 lots sold through ten auctions held across the… Read more…

ORNL Motor Drive Design Targets Heat and Wear for High-Power Electric Propulsion

ORNL Motor Drive Design Targets Heat and Wear for High-Power Electric Propulsion The next phase of transport electrification will depend on more than battery capacity and charging speed. Heavy-duty trucks, construction equipment, ships and aircraft need propulsion systems capable of handling sustained high electrical loads without excessive heat, interference or premature component degradation. Im… Read more…

Komatsu Brings Connected Earthworks to Singapore’s Changi Terminal 5

Komatsu Brings Connected Earthworks to Singapore’s Changi Terminal 5 Komatsu’s first full-scale Smart Construction deployment in Singapore will place digitally guided machinery and shared earthworks data at the centre of one of Asia’s most consequential infrastructure programmes. At Changi Airport Terminal 5, the immediate objective is to improve the accuracy, visibility and coordination of constr… Read more…