New Volvo loading shovel lands on familiar territory at Scottish Bogside
The world’s leading glass bottle manufacturer, O-I Manufacturing Ltd, continues to favour Volvo Construction Equipment products as it takes delivery of a new L150H loading shovel for its Devilla silica sand quarry located at Bogside near Alloa, Scotland O-I Manufacturing Ltd has been operating Volvo machines since 1996 at its Bogside facility thanks to the reliability, service support and overall product quality, according to quarry manager, Gareth Jones. “Apart from a crawler dozer, all our mobile plant is comprised of Volvo branded products which include loading shovels, articulated haulers and a long-reach twenty-one tonne excavator,” he says. “It’s the product quality and reliability of our Volvo machines and, not least, the after sales support we enjoy which are the main drivers for us to continue favouring the Volvo brand.”
The new L150H wheeled loader replaces a G-model which has clocked up 6,400 hours of virtually trouble-free service joining an existing fleet comprising of two A30 articulated haulers, two L120H wheeled loaders, along with an EC200D long-reach excavator and a compact 5.5 tonne EC55C. It now becomes the quarry’s prime extractive machine loading silica sand from the face into the two resident A30 articulated haulers. The twenty tonne machine benefits from Volvo designed and manufactured driveline components designed to offer considerable fuel savings on every shift with a 13-litre 300hp Volvo Stage IV engine.
One of the key features is that a maximum torque of 1317Nm is achieved at just 1450rpm and the resultant fuel savings are further enhanced by the Volvo Eco-pedal encouraging the operator to run the machine at its optimum rpm in the engine’s torque curve. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the performance and reliability of the new L150H model,” says Gareth. “Our operators have positively commented on the smoothness of control and performance in addition to the low-noise emission of the machine.”
One notable feature on the new L150H is the 3.6m³ capacity bucket. Besides the standard bucket configuration, including spill bars, O-I Manufacturing Ltd has added 40mm thick edges welded to the underside of the teeth. “The very nature of the material we are extracting here at Devilla means we experience a high rate of wear to the ground engaging equipment, so in order to combat this, we’ve added 40mm of Hardox 400 material to the underside of the teeth and heel plates of the bucket,” explains Gareth.
The new L150H is fitted with CareTrack as standard, which is Volvo’s telematics system that enables remote monitoring of a wide range of machine functions (e.g. location, fuel consumption, service reminders, etc.) thus optimizing customer operations. In addition, the machine is covered by Volvo’s Gold Service Agreement which, in essence, is a full repair and maintenance agreement with Volvo Construction Equipment that takes complete care of the machine apart from its fuel usage, on behalf of O-I Manufacturing Ltd.
O-I Manufacturing Ltd is the world’s leading glass packaging manufacturer. The Devilla quarry supplies high quality silica sand to the nearby Alloa factory which is one of 80 plants found worldwide across 23 countries.
Volvo Construction Equipment markets wheeled loaders, articulated haulers, hydraulic excavators, Volvo utility equipment and Volvo road equipment products in Great Britain. There are eight strategically placed customer support centres and a network of utility equipment dealers to ensure high quality customer support is maintained throughout the country.
